Former President Barack Obama is sharing how frustrated he was with his "institutional role" during the killings of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin.

He says he held back on some of his feelings because he did not want to sway a federal investigation.

"I did not in any way want to endanger their capacity to go in, investigate and potentially charge perpetrators," Obama said. "Which meant that I could not come down – or appear to come down decisively – in terms of guilt or innocence. In terms of what happened. So you had institutional constraints."

The former president says he does feel he was able to help the Justice Department rework how it tackles these investigations.

This story was originally published by Alex Livingston and Eliana Moreno at Newsy.