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Excerpts from police transcripts What follows are excerpts of police transcripts detailing the events of the night of Dec. 28, when a Philomath man held dozens of police officers at bay in a 90-minute standoff outside Oregon State Police headquarters in Central Point. The narrative is based on tapes of dispatch calls and transcribed police interviews with officers after the incident. Cole Smith pulls into the Oregon State Police parking lot in Central Point, picks up a call-box phone outside the station and tells a dispatcher he needs to see an officer. It's 7:20 p.m. SMITH : I'm in a brown truck and I need to talk to a cop. DISPATCH : OK. I'll see if ... are you in Medford? SMITH : I don't know where in the hell I am. ... DISPATCH : OK. What highway were you last on? SMITH : Off I-5. I'm getting back in my truck now, 'cause I'm gonna kill somebody. DISPATCH : Matlock, this is Donna. I've got a hysterical guy out in the parking lot in a brown truck that just hung up and said he was gonna kill somebody. SENIOR TROOPER CHRIS MATLOCK : Out here in our parking lot? DISPATCH : That's what he said. MATLOCK, OSP : We got outside, there was a brown pickup parked to the ... right of the patrol car; or to the north side of it. Its engine was running, had its headlights on, there was a large man inside the car, crying, very loud, and, uh, and at that point in time, both myself and (OSP Trooper Bill) Matson began to holler at him and ask him, you know, what the problem was, you know, is there anything we can do to help. MATSON, OSP : I remember we could see the rig right away ... the look in the person's eyes was one of, uh, distress. ... I could see sweating, I could see him beating his forehead with his fists. ... A lot of his statements he was making let me know that this was really like a real deal. It wasn't like just someone sort of upset. MATLOCK : He was making statements about we had to get the things out of his head. I couldn't understand everything he was saying but that there was stuff in his head that we had to get rid of or help him get taken away. And that, uh, he was going to shoot someone. MATSON : I asked him, "Have you been taking meds?" He said, "Yes, I took the whole bottle. All of them." I said, "How long ago?" He didn't give that up. He didn't tell me how long. I said, "What did you take?" "Yeah, I don't know. I can't spell it, I don't know what it is." And he seemed to be very, very distraught over something that had happened possibly that day or over the Christmas holidays, regarding his two little daughters as it revolved around his wife. He said, "Yeah, my wife, she's on me 24-seven. I never do anything right." MATLOCK : I kept askin' him several times to put his right hand up so that we could see it. He had his left hand ... on the steering wheel or when he was crying it would go up to his face ... rubbing back and forth. But the right one was just always stuck out straight parallel to the seat and there was items in the car where we couldn't see the hand. ... He'd made several statements that ... we were gonna have to kill him, or that he wanted to kill somebody else. We kept telling him we didn't want to kill him. ... And at one point in time Trooper Matson turned around to me and he said, "I've been talking to people for 18 years. Now what?" I said, "Just keep talking, Bill." I mean, you know. He (Matson) seemed to be getting along OK with him, it ... it hadn't degraded to the part where, you know, he'd pulled a weapon out. Trooper Matson told me, he says, "If I see a gun," he said, "I'm shooting." And I said, "Well, that'll be two of us." TROOPER JOEY POLLARD, OSP : I was coming on to duty ... getting ready to come on duty at 8 p.m. I was dressed in my civilian clothes. ... I can see Chris Matlock, Trooper Matlock, and, uh, Trooper Matson, both had their guns drawn or pointing at the suspect. ... Trooper Matlock motioned me to basically get out of where you're at. He may ram the front doors, uh, so obviously I took off. I ran back down the hall ... back to the parking lot, got in my patrol car and just raced around to the front of the parking lot and ended up parking it somewhat perpendicular to their cars. And laid some spike strips out in the parking lot to prevent him from getting out of the lot. And, uh, lit him up with a spotlight. OSP dispatchers call Central Point police for back up. It's now 7:28 p.m. SGT. STEVE McGEE, CENTRAL POINT POLICE : As we pull in, we're south of the subject's vehicle. ... I exit with a shotgun and we take cover behind our vehicle because we have no idea right at this point why they're negotiating with the subject in the pickup. ... (Soon after) more units from Medford Police Department come in. I don't know how many, I don't know where they're parked ... but there was numerous other vehicles pulling in at the time. SGT. JERRY BURCHFIEL, MEDFORD POLICE : I heard the call on my radio come out that, uh, there was an incident involving OSP troopers having guns pulled at their offices. And they requested all Central Point units to respond and I heard the call and I came this direction along with other MPD officers to offer assistance. ... I called (Medford) Detective (Tim) Lytle, had him bring some, uh, diversionary devices to the location in case he needed those. McGEE, CPPD : The pickup is running, you can see that it's running. I have one of my officers get my spike strips out of my trunk and deploy the spike strips. ... We had several sets deployed. (The idea was) to keep the guy from going mobile, basically. By 7:44 p.m., hostage negotiators from OSP, Medford police and the Jackson County Sheriff's Department are en route to the scene. Trooper Tanya Henderson, one of the negotiators, asks dispatchers to contact police in California to get background information. Negotiators learn that Smith has a history of depression and attempts at suicide. HENDERSON, OSP : Matson was trying to negotiate with him, or trying to communicate with him ... so they requested I go up there. ... (Jackson County sheriff's Deputy) Joe Puckett and I both approached together. Bill Matson was introducing me, I could hear him. ... See, he's already setting up my introduction to start negotiations with him. ... He made a couple of statements to me that ... something to the effect that we better hurry up and do something 'cause his car was running out of gas, and, uh, he just seemed real agitated about that. ... He said that him and his wife were having problems, she'd overdrawn all his accounts, he had no money ... his kids would grow up without a father. DEPUTY JOE PUCKETT, JACKSON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT : He kept saying, "When I run out of, when I'm about to run out of gas" that was like his time when he was gonna take action. ... He pointed out to me at one point, he said, "I'm gonna shoot that officer right there" ... and at that point he was pointing at Lt. Simons, who was one vehicle away from my location, acting as our cover. Smith begins driving his truck back and forth in the parking lot. It's 8:03 p.m. HENDERSON, OSP : We all had to scramble around. At the time, I was yelling at him, "Stop! Stop, Cole, stop! Let's talk!" PUCKETT, JCSD : We weren't getting anywhere with the dialogue, in fact, if anything, we were losing it. I was losing any kind of a relationship I felt with him. ... (Smith) was basically cutting everyone off. HENDERSON, OSP : The rapport wasn't going there ... so Puckett and I told him we're gonna try and get a phone, make it easier to hear. ... It was hard to 'cause we were all yelling. And he was getting tired of yelling at us. He said he couldn't hear us. PUCKETT, JCSD : That's when (we) ... started trying to make contact with him on the PA. ... (Medford) Detective (Tim) Doney showed up and he ... took over the PA. But we couldn't make any verbal contact with the suspect ... we weren't able to hear him. McGEE, CPPD : There was a couple incidents that somebody else got on a PA and tried to negotiate. It was getting him kind of confused so I got on the radio and asked for one of my officers to ... tell them to quit using the PA because it was getting the guy agitated, very much so. CAPT. TIM McLAIN, OSP : There was a little bit of confusion there ... trying to get some communication going with this guy. I mean, they weren't getting the communication back from him. So at that point, we had a Central Point officer going to get bag phones, you know, one of the tactical phones. We thought that would be the next avenue, if we could get that phone to him. TRAFFIC FROM UNIDENTIFIED MEDFORD SERGEANT ON MPD DISPATCH FREQUENCY : North end be ready to have your spikes out ... Do you have your strips out, ready to go, in case he comes that way? ... I think he might back out at the north end over the curb. Be ready. HENDERSON, OSP : He acted like he was gonna try and get around the cars or even maybe ram the cars. A couple of times when he drove up, I know a bunch of the guys were standing on one side of the patrol car, Central Point patrol car, and they had to keep shifting. I'm thinking, if he hits that patrol car he's gonna take out probably 10 guys, I mean, 'cause there was probably 10 guys bouncing around on the back side of that patrol car. So it was very dangerous. OFFICER TIM McCARTNEY, MPD : At one point, I looked around and ... we had a crossfire going. There was people on the left of me, people on the right of me, people behind me, people on the ground with guns drawn, and I start doing a "what if?" in my brain. What if this guy does this? What's going to happen? ... If the guy would've drove forward or if he would've came out at one point ... there's probably at that point 15 cops in a bowl. And I thought: This is not good. And like I said, nobody was taking control. POLLARD, OSP : He had a couple of escape routes. We were trying to get, I had spike strips here. He had a small avenue here he could've got out. And he could've at any time gone over this back curb, out the north end, and easily drove his car out of the grass. Yeah, there's a couple places here between uh, cars for quite a while before we got some spike strips in there that he could've sneaked out that way. So there were a number of different routes. He could've got out. BURCHFIEL, MPD : I don't know what triggered him or whatever. He decides he's going to leave. ... You can see him as he's putting forward, he's checking things out, looking to see where the strips are and he sees these strips, and he's actually able to get around the strips the first time here, so I gathered them up and deployed them up here. He, he came to stop up here and uh, I got between a couple of vehicles so I threw spikes right in underneath his car. And so he pulled forward and punctured a couple of tires and then he backed up and punctured the other ones. HENDERSON, OSP : I also requested that dispatch get a hold of his wife in Philomath and have her patched through to me, and I was gonna talk to her. ... She was talking to dispatch as the incident was ending out there. She hadn't been patched through to me yet. An OSP dispatcher gets a phone number for Smith's wife, Jennifer, and makes contact. It's 8:48 p.m. JENNIFER SMITH : Hello. DISPATCHER : Hi, this is Dina at the Oregon State Police. ... I'm calling about your husband, Cole? JENNIFER : Wonderful. DISPATCHER : We have a situation down here, we are in Central Point near Medford. And he is in his vehicle, will not come out. Um ... quite depressed, we wanted to see if you might be able to help us. JENNIFER : What can I do ... I have two kids here. DISPATCHER : Right. I, I think maybe they just want to see if you can talk to him. ... Do you know if he has any guns with him? JENNIFER : No, he's not allowed to have any weapons. ... He's not a violent person. ... I don't understand why he won't let you guys in. Um ... he's just very big. ... If he took too much of his medication, the fact is he may not be able to function; it slows his body down. Especially his nighttime medication. ... I, I think I know what happened. It's, it's a pattern here. I've seen this before. Um ... 'cause we're just getting divorced right now. He left today. ... DISPATCHER : OK. OK. Uh ... can I put you on hold for just a moment please? JENNIFER : Sure. DETECTIVE TIM DONEY, MPD : There had been some talk ... that we had some flash-bang devices as maybe a diversionary tactic to try and gain physical control ... He had the windows down and it was just the situation where, uh, our hands were totally forced. I mean, we couldn't let this guy get out on the road. He was blocked in. We had a difficult time communicating with him to get him a phone 'cause you couldn't get close enough to him to make contact. So the word kinda went out that there was a flash-bang. BURCHFIEL, MPD : And he's going, "Any of you guys have kids?" And I'm talking to him and saying, "Yeah, I have kids. I got three kids. Get out of the car. Let's talk, let's make it, let's put an end to this right now." ... And about that time, Terry Simons, who was crouched behind another car, just appeared. Asked if I had flash-bang and I said I did. And he said to deploy the flash-bang, and get around to driver's side. LT. TERRY SIMONS, OSP : I have thumbs up to go ahead and utilize that (the flash-bang). And all simultaneously we're moving the OSP car back behind so he couldn't get further, trying to confine the vehicle. DETECTIVE TIM LYTLE, MPD : I felt confident we were going to get him out of there without a problem, that we'd bang him and it would distract him 'cause it's worked so many times, and we'd haul him out of there and that'd be the end of that. HENDERSON, OSP : The captain walked up to me and told me they were gonna try the flash-bang. I honestly told him that I didn't agree with it. I said that we were talking with him, we should try and keep talking with him. I mean, that's our training as a SWAT negotiator, we always try and talk and talk and talk. DEPUTY TERRY LARSON, JCSD : I was talking to Tanya (Henderson) you know, told them, "Hey Curtis is on the way with the throw phone" and all this kinda stuff, and this is when the guy kept inching closer and inching closer, and then somebody said, "Hey we're gonna throw a flash-bang," and Joe (Puckett) and Tanya told -- I think the captain for state police that was standing there -- they said, "Hey ... we're still trying to talk to the guy. Don't throw the flash-bang. We want to talk to the guy." And uh, he kinda, the captain kinda went forward, and at that point they threw the flash-bang. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA