Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she supported President Barack Obama’s decision to form a task force to review police tactics and praised the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white police officer on Staten Island.

"Each of us has to grapple with some hard truths about race and justice in America," Clinton said in wide-ranging remarks about the protests over police tactics that have erupted in cities across the country.

"Because in spite of all the progress we’ve made together, African-Americans, most particularly African-American men, are still more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes and sentenced to longer prison terms," she added.

The grand jury decision Wednesday that the New York police officer should face no criminal charges in the death of Eric Garner, who had been placed in a chokehold, came about a week after a grand jury in Missouri decided not to indict a white police officer who Aug. 9 shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.

"These are our streets, our children, our fellow Americans and our grief," Clinton said of the deaths of Garner and Brown.

She called for changes in police tactics, a revamp of the overcrowded prison system and the demilitarization of local police departments.

"A third of all black men face the prospect of prison in their lifetimes," she said.

That fact, she said, had "devastating consequences" for families and communities.

Federal funds to police departments, she said, should be used "to bolster best practices rather than buy weapons of war that have no place on our streets."

At moments, Clinton, who delivered the remarks at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston, struck a personal and maternal tone. She called on the audience of professional, mostly white, women to imagine what it is like to be a black man.

"The most important thing any of us can do is to try even harder to see the world through our neighbors’ eyes," she said. "Try to imagine what it is like to walk in their shoes, to share their pain and their hopes and their dreams."

She quoted Brown’s father, saying, "We are stronger united."

But Clinton also used her remarks to echo Obama’s praise of the police.

"All over the country, there are creative and effective police departments demonstrating that it is possible to keep us safe and reduce crime and violence without relying on unnecessary force or excessive incarceration," she said. "We all know there are decent, honorable, brave police officers out in our communities every day."

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