Here's most of the text of my interview with Jason Renaud. As usual, edited to remove "ums" and "urrrs". I left out a few portions but I think this gives a fair representation of his campaign. It was good enough that I was happy to cough up $5 for his petition drive. I'd be happy to see him in the General Election against Jesse Cornett.

Jason Renaud has been an advocate for people with disabilities and mental health for over twenty years. Over that time, homelessness remains as bad as ever as does the need for addiction services. Worse, in his view, the City has no plan for dealing with these issues. A mental health advocate with the Mental Health Association of Portland, Renaud and the Association began looking into Chasse’s death while in police custody three years ago. The Association, which takes on a single project each year in order to “do it to completion and do it right”, sought to “educate the public about plight of the mentally ill and how hard it is for them to get justice; about police officers and how a traumatic incident affects them over time, and about the jail system and how inept they have been over time”. In other words, to go beyond the tragedy of James Chasse’s death and examine the long plight of how the City of Portland deals with the mentally ill.

“The Multnomah County jail is biggest mental health service provider in the state.” Unfortunately, the “Sheriff doesn’t admit his main job isn’t locking up bad guys but in providing these services [nor does the District Attorney] “do or fund for addiction or mental health services. … We can’t afford to lock people up anymore”. California, he noted, closed two prisons in 18 months after passing a law in 2002 that mandated treatment services before sending people to jail. We can retrain former prison and jail guards as drug and alcohol addiction counselors “because it’s basically the same mindset” as their current jobs.

The Association made the Chasse story well-known to Portland by “stewarding about 300 stories through all the news media and now the name Chasse is not going to be forgotten in Portland for a long time. What happened to James Chasse is well-recognized. …The DA screwed up the grand jury. The City did as little as possible to ameliorate the problem. All the City Council people have either avoided talking about it or stuck their foot in it.

“We know we’re going to lose in every bureaucratic or administrative opportunity; we will always lose, people with mental health [issues] or addiction. But we won’t lose in court of public opinion” because there are too many people out there who have lost someone to mental illness.

“To carry the message into City Hall takes a little finesse. Saltzman made some crucial errors. One, is that he agreed with Sam Adams to take on the police commission. It would have been very easy for him to say, ‘No I’m happy doing what I’m doing …. I don’t know nothing about being a police commissioner. The police bureau is an unmanageable bureau by one civilian … and you should do it as Mayor. This is the most important, most complicated, most interesting” job. It is the job of the Mayor, Renaud asserted, to be the Police Commissioner.

Why should you become the police commissioner?

“I think the first thing is that I’m willing, and there’s no one else on the City Council who’s willing. … Being able to listen to police officers and hear what their problems are and being able to hear back from them what’s going on at the Bureau…. The Police Commissioner does four things; this is not listed in the City Charter. The City Charter has one sentence: The Policy Commissioner has oversight of the Police Bureau. The Police Commissioner does four things. He supervises the Chief. He does two things for the Chief: he gives her a shoulder to cry on and he is the political heavy at City Council to make sure the Bureau’s issues get on the portfolio. Number two, the Commissioner negotiates all the contracts, all the union contracts and all the significant purchasing contracts for the City. Third, the Commissioner speaks to the City about the relationship between the City and the Bureau. He doesn’t speak for the Bureau, but about the relationship between the City and the Bureau and how the City Charter affects the Bureau. And then he speaks to the Bureau, to the officers themselves about the concerns of the citizens. Saltzman’s failed on all four counts. That’s not saying why I’m capable; that’s saying why I need to run.

The reason I’m the right person to do this is I carry a reason to do it. I guess that’s number one; that’s important. I’m not a cop; I’m not interested in being a cop. But I’ve been working with cops… .“ Renaud has worked with Crisis Intervention Team as a trainer, with cops in Skid Row, with probation officers. “I’m familiar with how they think and operate. No so much to think I am one… What the Commissioner does is provide that communications conduit between the Bureau and the City.”

On the lack of process following Chasse’s death and Chris Humphreys’ actions following the TriMet incident

“After the incident on TriMet and coincident to discipline, Humphreys filed a claim with the Disability Board where he was going to take stress-related disability leave. Now what the labor community calls ‘stress-related’ the psychiatric community would call post-traumatic stress disorder.” Police bureaus all across the country are becoming more and more knowledgeable about PTSD, in part because so many veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from it, and many of the return vets are becoming cops.

“Chris Humphreys has post-traumatic stress syndrome; he has a mental illness. He has said to the community, ‘Time out. I’m not safe to be on the streets anymore. I’m going to get help and when I’ve gotten help, I’m coming back. That’s better than our message: resign, get lost. Much better, because as a mental health expert, I’m on his side. And his union is on his side.” Renaud said he told Scott Westerman that when Humphreys was ready to come back, he would help him come back. “He’s like a lot of other cops. This is the thin blue line; this is why they all hold together.” In the past, he said, it was booze, tranquilizers and steroids; now it’s pharmaceuticals. “These guys, they have a serious amount of shit they go through that you and I…”.

Renaud said that this is not the first time Humphreys has sought treatment, that he initially took stress-related leave in 2008, came back from that, and now is seeking further assistance. “This is good mental health treatment,” said Renaud, “This is what we do.” But if a cop came forward and directly said he or she had a mental illness, “Guess what happens? They’re gone! They’re just gone. That’s just a completely ok reason to fire a cop.”

Admitting to something they know to be true about themselves, a confession of a mental illness, is currently “a strong disincentive” to come forward. The internet and Google searches means a cop fired for that reason will never get another job with the police.

“That blue shield means something to these guys. We take care of our own like soldiers do, because we’re the only ones who understand what we’ve been through. We’re struggling this disorder, this thing psychiatrists call PTSD; our brotherhood is our best treatment. So that’s the message [for the Police Commissioner] to carry forward, to say, ‘Listen, you don’t have to be scared because I’m not going to fire you for getting help. I am going to fire you if you’re fucking around and not getting help.” His promise is to treat mental illness the way the union contract calls for it to be treated: like an illness.

The message liberal Portland took from that parade is that cops don’t care about Chasse…

“…they don’t.”

That’s not the message you want to get across, though.

“No. We’re not done yet. … [The police is] a paramilitary organization. One of the problem with liberals … they don’t understand military organizations like jails and prisons and hospitals need top-down management, and they need management that understands their language and is going to minds the business.”

You’re running to be police commissioner; what if you don’t get that?

“What I did was say, let’s focus right on the police commissioner because we have two months to run this little qualifying campaign [for public financing]. If we don’t qualify, it’s all moot.” Having too many platforms will just confuse people, “so I picked the hardest one and I get the best angle on it. … If we get past jan 29th, I’ll go figure out the Water Bureau.”

On the signature-gathering process

“if we could expand Portland’s public finance model to the counties and other cities, and then the Legislature, “we could get rid of the Paul Romains of the world overnight”.

About minorities getting into this race; public financing should make that more possible.

The public finance process is a “process I think is honest and manageable and available, and so, in a sense, the responsibility is on that community. The door is now open. So when people say, There’s no minorities…. Well, you didn’t bring anyone to the party. You didn’t even have someone ready. The Latinos don’t have anybody. In a sense, it’s calling people’s cards. Show us your hand.”

You say the door is open; is there not a role for City leaders to assist in this process? You can’t just say, it’s your job not mine; I’m already elected.

“I think you’re right. The vetting process begins with hiring subordinates to come and be at City Hall, see if you like it, meet the people, build a rolodex….” An important factor are the ”middle-management heroes” — he pointed to Loleno Poe, who has worked for former Multnomah County Chair Bev Stein and current Chair Ted Wheeler — who bring in young people, mentor them and “keep the door open with their body”. A “very important role” of a city commissioner to use hiring within his/her office to bring in promising young people, minorities. It’s also important for the mayor and commissioners to reach out to members of the public who do not have a financial stake in decisions and bring them into the process. He told how his son became a member of the streetcar-naming team and then the the group looking at uses for Memorial Coliseum because Sam Adams opened the door for him to get involved.

How to develop public’s trust of police and vice versa

Currently, when people have an issue with a police officer, they are more likely to sue sue the police rather than waste time with the “toothless” review process. Until the IPR has “the ability to summon officers to speak, and those officers are going to fired if they don’t speak to the IPR, it’s toothless. … That’s number one, to give the IPR some teeth. And then to back up those officers and say if you speak, we’re not going to hold you unaccountable; there may be criminal charges. But this is part of the process of working for the City; it’s part of your mandate. It’s not just running around like a tv show and shooting everybody.” However, you will get a fair hearing and a chance to defend yourself.

Some other changes that are required. Recruitment: making sure those who join the force understand what is expected and what is not permitted. Reopen the Chief’s forum to bring her back in direct contact with the community. That contact will often be confrontational, but “that confrontation is part of the balance, the natural balance within the politics”. Which, he said, is better than letting things build up and then exploding so the police and the Chief end up with people pissed off at them.

His 11-point plan for dealing with the police involves steps that are both free and quick: “This is a PR disaster… We’re going to do something different”.

Are you using the campaign you are viable PC candidate, to make the police trust you should you get the job?

“I don’t think they trust anybody. …We can’t live in a city like this, so densely packed, without rules, without people who assert those rules. Human beings aren’t just that nice. … They’re part of reality, so you’ve got to deal with them like they’re real.”

What about the non-police aspects of city business?

He doesn’t think Nick Fish is doing a good job with housing. “His pr team thinks he’s doing a good job” as do the people who directly receive City money from him; “but no one else does.”

“There are more homeless people today than ever before. There’s no plan for solving homelessness that makes sense at all. No homeless people have been involved in any of the negotiations or discussions about how to solve homelessness.”

The police and firefighers disablity and pension fund “has been a boutique bank inside of City Hall for these two unions. … Why are we not using workers comp for police and fire?”

And finally, he does not support the recall effort. “They haven’t made their case [to Portlanders}. They’re just angry people trying to find their niche”.