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LMPD Chief Endorses Clinton For President

Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad says Donald Trump is "off base" and running a campaign with a flawed premise.

"I definitely do not endorse Trump and will be voting for Hillary Clinton," Conrad told WFPL in an interview Tuesday following a forum on race relations at the Louisville Urban League.

Conrad's endorsement of the Democratic candidate for president comes nearly a month after the nation's largest police union threw supportbehind Trump.  In a statement, the some 330,000 member Fraternal Order of Police saidTrump has made a "real commitment" to law enforcement.

The president of the local police union did not return multiple requests for comment regarding a presidential endorsement. However, the River City FOP's Facebook page boasts a letter from the national police union endorsing Trump.

Trump is pledging to crack down on crime if he's elected president. But the policies he's expressed support for could disproportionately target racial minorities, according to a recent reportfrom the New York Times.

For instance, Trump praises a controversial "stop-and-frisk" policy that was used by the New York City Police Department but ruled unconstitutional by a federal district court judge in 2013, according to a recent reportfrom NPR. More than four in five people stopped by New York police under stop-and-frisk were black or Hispanic.

Conrad acknowledged problems do exist across the country that need to be addressed, but "trying to revert back to failed policies and revert back to an older time when things were even more inequitable than what they are today is not the way to go."

He said the U.S. Supreme Court, in the caseof Terry vs. Ohio, has already granted police the ability to stop people on the reasonable suspicion of a crime.

Giving police the ability to stop and question residents without that reasonable suspicion of a crime, Conrad said, will damage the relationship between citizens and police.

"We have got to treat people right if we are going to earn their trust," he said.

Conrad is a registered Democrat and in 2013 contributed $1,000 to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer's re-election campaign, state records show.

He praised Clinton's resume and said "she's groomed herself to be in this position to lead this country."

"I don't think we've ever had anyone more qualified to be President of the United States," he said.

Regardless of who is elected, Conrad said he wants a president that will support providing more grant funding to local police departments to get more officers on the street.

"The ability to be able to hire officers and not take away from some other city project is amazing," he said.

And he said he'd "love to see Congress actually face the firearms situation we have here in this country."

"We, as a country, have got to come to grips," he said. "We need to make sure that people that have no business having a gun do not have guns."

Conrad said Louisville Metro Police officers have seized 1,300 guns this year, about 500 more than the same time last year.

Jacob Ryan is the managing editor of the Kentucky Center for Investigative reporting. He's an award-winning investigative reporter who joined LPM in 2014. Email Jacob at jryan@lpm.org.