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Attorney General nominee previously spoke of 'conflicted relationship' between cops and minorities

Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

As Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch visited senators on Tuesday who will vote on her nomination for attorney general, a newspaper report called attention to speeches she made more than a decade ago about relations between police and the minority community.

In speeches made in 2000 and 2001, Lynch said “we live in a time where people fear the police” and that the onus is on law enforcement to rebuild trust. The New York Times has quotes from the speeches to the Association of Black Women Attorneys and the Black Law Students Association at the Benjamin N. Cardozo law school in Manhattan.

“The minority community has often had a conflicted relationship with law enforcement,” she told the law students. “This is primarily because so often we are its targets, and often perceived to be the only targets, both by ourselves and by others.”

The Times says Lynch’s remarks “could put her at odds with some law enforcement groups” who claimed Attorney General Eric Holder appeared to side with Ferguson protesters before examining the facts.

Lynch is also widely known for her civil rights prosecution of New York police officers accused of beating and sodomizing Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broomstick.