Mayor Pete Buttigieg takes the stage in Miami at his first Democratic debate

MIAMI -- Coming into the Democratic debate on Thursday, there was no doubt that Mayor Pete Buttigieg would be facing questions regarding the fatal police involved shooting of Eric Logan at the hands of a South Bend Police officer.

Mayor Pete said addressing the issue of racism in South Bend and nationally will be the only way to solve the problem.

Rachel Maddow, who moderated part of the debate, asked Mayor Pete, "The police force in South Bend is now 6% black in a city that is 26% black, why has that not improved over your two terms as Mayor?"

"Because I couldn't get it done, my community is in anguish right now because of an officer involved shooting a black man, Eric Logan, killed by a white officer. I'm not allowed to take sides until the investigation comes back the officer said he was attacked with a knife but he didn't have his body camera on. It's a mess and we are hurting and I could walk you through all of the things that we have done as a community, all of the steps that we took from bias training to de-escalation but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan but when I look in his mother’s eyes I have to face the fact that nothing I say will bring him back, this is an issue that is facing our community and so many communities around the country,” Mayor Pete Buttigieg said.

One by one the ten candidates discussed what would be the first issue for their presidency to tackle if elected, to which viewers heard answers like gun violence, climate change and tax cuts.

Mayor Pete answered that he wanted to fix our democracy as a whole.

Mayor Pete also told the American people that he would rejoin the Paris Agreement to combat climate change and will look to other solutions to help rural America, using South Bend as an example.

Thursday’s debate was just one of many Democratic debates on the agenda.

The next Democratic debate will take place in Detroit in July.