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Mayor Warren Talks About Ferguson & Her Facebook Comments

Randy Gorbman
/
WXXI News

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren is speaking out about the controversy caused by the decision not to indict in the Ferguson case. And the mayor also is reflecting on comments generated by her recent post on social media.

Warren says she was not surprised that there was no indictment in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Missouri by a white police officer. She feels the legal process was flawed from the beginning.

But what may have caught Warren a bit by surprise is the large number of comments on her Facebook posting right after the grand jury decision was announced.  On her Facebook Page, Warren talked about a “young unarmed black man and an authority figure who had little regard for this young man's life.”

That was among the sentences in her post that angered some of her critics, although the Facebook statement did have its share of Mayor Warren supporters as well.

Warren says it's ok to have these discussions as long as we try to do it civilly.

"In our community, we embrace those social differences, we talk about them, we come together as a community, and we may agree to disagree, but we're able to have a civil discourse and I think that, that's important.”

Warren repeatedly emphasized in our interview that Rochester is not Ferguson, and she says progress is being made in helping city residents understand how they can work together.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.