The following is a transcript of Jason W. Park’s address to City of Industry Sheriff Patrol on October 8, 2025, via the NAMI-SYSLE (National Alliance on Mental Illnes, Sharing Your Story with Law Enforcement) program:
Introduction
Hi everyone, good morning. My name is Jason, and I am a member of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of individuals and families affected by mental illness. NAMI has over 650 affiliates in communities across the country that engage in advocacy, research, support and education. Members of NAMI are families, friends and people living with mental illness such as major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCS), panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and borderline personality disorder.
Hola a todos, y buenos días. Mi nombre es Jason y soy miembro de NAMI, la Alianza Nacional de Enfermedades Mentales. NAMI es la organización de salud mental de base más grande del país dedicada a mejorar las vidas de las personas y familias afectadas por enfermedades mentales. NAMI cuenta con más de seiscientas cincuenta afiliados en comunidades de todo el país que se dedican a la defensa, la investigación, el apoyo y la educación. Los miembros de NAMI son familiares, amigos y personas que viven con enfermedades mentales como depresión mayor, esquizofrenia, trastorno bipolar, trastorno obsesivo-compulsivo (OCS), trastorno de pánico, trastorno de estrés postraumático (TEPT) y trastorno límite de la personalidad.
Presentation
Good morning everybody, I hope you are all doing well. My name is Jason and as someone who has a mental illness, I would like to provide you with some information about how I was before recovery and after recovery. And without law enforcement, my recovery would not have been possible,
I was diagnosed in July 1998 with bipolar disorder type one, which occurs when your emotions are either too high or too low, in other words, manic (which is extremely irritable or overactive) or depressed (which is more than just sad, when you can’t get out of bed in the morning). It can be treated with medication and therapy, but you need a skilled psychiatrist who prescribes the right medications in the right dosages, and you have to take them exactly as prescribed. And you have to focus on talk therapy and take it very seriously.
So, what was the precipitating event? I was mis-medicated and manic when I got into a fight with my father and brandished a golf club at him. LAPD were called to the scene, and fortunately I cooled down so that nothing major happened when the officers arrived. I simply told them what had happened, what I had done, and that was it. That was my first experience with mental illness and the law. I was completely out of line. I was detained in the Twin Towers for 100 hours, without medication. I decompensated quickly. No Asians in jail. Just whites, blacks and Hispanics. I narrowly avoided a couple fights. But why talk about it? I was on one side of the bars, you guys were on the other side. And my dad ultimately bailed me out, bless his heart.
Looking back on that experience, I heard a story which might not be true, but people widely believed it to be true: U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush got into a fight with his son, U.S. President George W Bush. To most, they would think that the father is disciplining an unruly child. But from another perspective, it was more about the son telling the father, “Hey, Dad, I’ve just drawn a line in the sand. And from now on, Dad, don’t you ever cross it!” The lawyer at the time called it a duel. More appropriately in Hispanic culture, it is called “mano a mano.”
Anyhow, I have been around the block, in five respects: (1) mental illness (2) substance abuse (3) homelessness (4) crime, and (5) jail. (1) Mental illness leads you to self-medication, which is a form of (2) substance abuse, because therapy is boring and medications don’t work, but that single snort of a white line up your nose makes all your problems go away. Then you can’t afford the rent or the mortgage, and you are (3) homeless. I myself had housing insecurity (living out of a motel room, sleeping in a car, crashing on a friend’s couch) not Skid Row, but that was bad enough. Finally, the homeless (4) commit crimes to survive, until they are caught and arrested, to be sent to (5) jail. The whole thing is interconnected.
Still, I cannot understand why law enforcement officers are sometimes expected to clean up after the homeless. OK, maybe there is a need to do that, but that’s not your job. Your job is to enforce the law, not to be a maid. Maybe Waste Management should do that. As for me, I felt what it was like being in jail with those who really belonged in there. I remember one of the arresting officers telling me, “Oh, so you’re just in here for the experience,” as if to say that I wasn’t a hardened criminal, like the felons. Still, I got sent in there for a violent felony: assault with a deadly weapon.
I sensed that group of the jail population who were REALLY sick, with no hope for reform: psychopaths and sociopaths, the Jeffrey Dahmer’s and Ted Bundy’s, murderers and rapists. If you want to divert some of the jail population, people like me, I guess, to a locked facility to get better, that’s fine, but it’s also important that certain individuals who are imprisoned should be put in a cell, locked up, and thrown away the key, before they wreak havoc to our civil society. You should all deserve a medal for having to deal with the lowest of the lows.
As a writer, I am interested in gun violence, and finding ways to address it, because I was mentally ill and I was arrested for a felony, so that makes me part of each class of people in our society who cannot possess a firearm. My way of addressing the problem is: have a gun buyer pass a psychological test before buying anything. It would test for homicidal thinking, and it does exist. The editorial piece I passed out to your supervisor is a summary of all the aspects of gun violence prevention that must be addressed. To write clearly and logically requires a mentally healthy mind. Gun violence has got to be the worst part of a cop’s life.
So that really is one measure of how well I’m doing. But just the fact that I am sitting in front of you, that is also testament to the recovery I have achieved. I take six different medications to combat my bipolar. Two mood stabilizers, an anti-anxiety med, one for bipolar depression, an anti-psychotic, and one for side effects…and I need every single one of those to function. So I have achieved a baseline level of recovery: shopping for groceries, putting gas in the car, paying the rent. But there is also another type of recovery that is progressive and ongoing. With that said, you have been part of my ongoing recovery, and it has been a pleasure speaking to all of you.
This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.