Jason Renaud, advocate for the mentally ill, calls for police accountability and change in tactics

Host Lisa Loving speaks with Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Oregon about the issues surrounding the recent police killing of a homeless man, Jack Dale Collins, in the Hoyt Arboretum.

Jason Renaud is co-founder of the Mental Health Association of Portland and serves as it’s secretary and spokesperson. He has been an impartial and uncompromising advocate for the rights and dignity of persons with addiction and mental illness for over seventeen years. Over the past decade he’s helped inform over fifty media organizations and spoken before thousands of people about the value of treatment services, about understanding the illness and pursuing individual recovery.

Jason is interested in how large communities make decisions about social justice issues. As the former executive director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Portland, he stewarded massive and public conversations about how mental illness and addiction services are provided in jails, prisons, hospitals and public clinics. As researcher for Compassion & Choices, a national legal and medical advocacy nonprofit, he helped increase membership by a factor of ten and revenue by a factor of five.