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File sheds light on suicide-by-cop State police document also raises questions about standoff By CHRIS BRISTOL and JESSICA SMITH of the Mail Tribune Long before he did it, Cole Younger Smith spoke openly of committing suicide at the hands of police. Cole Smith At 6-foot-8 and 300 pounds, the 25-year-old former football player knew that his size alone was capable of striking fear in the heart of any officer. He told his wife so. He also told her that if he had a gun -- or claimed he had one -- so much the better. "He said, you know, with his size and all, it's easy for him to do," Jennifer Smith later told police. "And when he says he has a gun ... why not believe him when he's that big?" Which is exactly what Smith did on the night of Dec. 28, pretending he was armed and provoking a 95-minute standoff in the parking lot outside state police headquarters in Central Point that ended with his death in a chaotic barrage of gunfire. Smith was shot more than 20 times. He was unarmed. Officers said Smith repeatedly claimed he had a 9mm handgun, and they fired only in self-defense when he jumped from his truck and brandished what turned out to be an empty razor case. A Jackson County grand jury in January cleared the officers of any wrongdoing. The standoff occurred just three days before Y2K, and police around the country were primed for terrorist acts and other violent, millennium-related scenarios. Only 10 days before, a gunman seriously wounded a Medford officer in the leg. That Smith -- who had a history of mental illness and suicide attempts -- did everything he could to make his death wish come true is clear, based on more than 1,000 pages of investigative material released to the Mail Tribune last week by state police in Salem. At the same time, the investigation also revealed questions about how the standoff unfolded. For example: So many officers responded to the scene that night -- up to 30 in all, from four agencies -- that some officers seemed unclear what was going on or who was in charge. Several Medford units apparently crossed into Central Point on their own initiative. The decision to stun Smith with a concussion grenade -- a "flash-bang" -- was made over the objection of at least one negotiator. The tactic backfired, setting in motion the deadly confrontation. The officer who first established a rapport with Smith was replaced early on by trained negotiators (three in all) who had trouble hearing Smith and vice versa. Negotiators were waiting for a portable phone when the command was given to subdue Smith with the stun grenade. Except for a press conference following the grand jury decision, authorities have refused to discuss the incident. The officers who shot Smith were from Medford, and city officials say they can't talk about it because Smith's widow has threatened to sue. An internal review was put on hold, pending the outcome. State police said they can't talk about the handling of the situation until their own internal review is completed. A spokesman at OSP headquarters in Salem said Friday that an internal review is under way. Smith was not from the Rogue Valley, and it remains unclear why he pulled into the state police parking lot that night. What is clear is that his seemingly random act was random only in place and time. Depressed and suicidal, he was admitted to a psychiatric care center in May 1998 -- a year after he first told his wife that he was going to hurt himself, investigators found. He took medication several times a day to control his mental illness. The Smiths had a rocky marriage, and Cole Smith was arrested in December 1998 for hitting his wife during an argument. Police in Philomath and Grass Valley, Calif., Smith's hometown, dealt with him on several occasions, mainly because of disputes with his wife. Over the 1999 Christmas holiday, Smith and his wife's family had a falling out. Tension from days of arguing with his wife led to a quarrel Dec. 28, and he decided to leave Philomath and return to his family in California. Investigators said Smith left Philomath about 3:30 p.m. after retrieving personal belongings from the home he shared with his wife. Shortly before 5 p.m., Smith called his wife collect to tell her he loved her. At 7:20 p.m., Smith arrived at the state police headquarters in Central Point. He picked up a phone outside the station and told a dispatcher that he needed to see an officer because he was going to kill someone. Then he returned to his truck and waited. Two state troopers then walked outside to see what was going on. The initial contact told them it was serious. "I remember we could see the rig," Trooper Bill Matson later told detectives, "and right away ... the look in the person's eyes was one of, uh, distress. ... I could see sweating. I could see tearful eyes. I could see him beating his forehead with his fists. ... A lot of statements he was making let me know that this was really like a real deal. It wasn't like just someone sort of upset.'' Matson's partner, Chris Matlock, had a similar take. "He was making statements about we had to get the things out of his head," Matlock recounted. "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 ... he was going to shoot someone." Both troopers immediately became concerned for their safety. The man in the truck, a tan 1986 Ford Ranger, refused to show his hands. "I kept askin' him several times to put his right hand up so that we could see it," Matlock said. "... 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." Soon the call went out for backup. Initially, dispatchers requested help only from Central Point police, but several Medford units overheard what was happening on their scanners and decided to check it out. At least 12 Medford officers eventually showed up, despite one senior officer telling a Medford dispatcher that patrol units should stay away unless their presence was requested. "If OSP makes the request, that's fine, but I don't want MPD taking the case over," Medford Detective Sgt. Roy Skinner said during a taped conversation with a dispatcher. "Somebody from OSP is probably going to take command, and if they need additional people, we'll supply them. ... But I don't want to start sending people out there... I just don't want volunteers to run out there to help. It gets too confusing." In addition to the units from Medford and Central Point, a half-dozen state troopers responded along with three Jackson County sheriff's deputies. Skinner's order apparently went unheeded. "It sounded pretty serious," one Medford officer, Steven Furst, later explained to investigators, "so I just advised dispatch that I was clearing and that I was gonna head towards that area." When detectives asked why, since OSP dispatchers were calling only for Central Point units, Furst said he figured the smaller police force could use the help. "We often cover each other," he recounted. "Like I said, we overlap or we'll cover them on incidents, and until we knew the seriousness of the situation, I figured I would head in that direction." But with so many officers converging on the scene, the OSP parking lot began to get crowded. Virtually every officer involved complained about the risk of crossfire, and several said that they were initially not even sure what was going on. Medford officer Tim McCartney said he eventually decided to leave. Out of nearly 30 officers at the scene, he was the only one who did. "I had a vision of volley fire and everybody getting shot," McCartney told investigators. "I said (to a sergeant), `This is not good. Somebody needs to take control of this."' State Trooper Tanya Henderson, a trained SWAT negotiator who was dispatched to the scene from Grants Pass, recalled her concerns about the way officers took cover behind a patrol unit that was blocking Smith from driving out of the parking lot. "I'm thinking, if he hits that patrol car he's gonna take out probably 10 guys," she said. "I mean, 'cause there was probably 10 guys bouncing around on the back side of that patrol car." Meanwhile, OSP dispatchers were trying to locate a member of Smith's family, including his wife, Jennifer. After getting the Smiths' phone number in Philomath, a dispatcher made contact. It was 8:48 p.m. Smith wasn't a violent man and he wasn't allowed to carry weapons, his wife told the dispatcher. "I think I know what happened," she said, according to a transcript of dispatch tapes. "It's, it's a pattern here. I've seen this before. Um ... 'cause we're just getting divorced right now. He left today. Um ... he probably overdosed on his medication." If her husband had overdosed, he likely would slow down and be unable to function, she said. The dispatcher soon asked Jennifer Smith to hold. Contrary to earlier statements from Smith, she did not ask to speak to her husband. She previously said she had been placed on hold for about 30 minutes. According to the dispatch transcripts, she was on the phone for about seven minutes. Outside, the negotiators asked that a portable "throw phone" be retrieved from the Central Point police station. At the same time, other officers were preparing to use the stun grenade to disable Smith and end the standoff. Almost from the beginning, there was talk of using a "flash-bang" stun grenade, officers later recalled. A Medford police sergeant sent for one, and several officers later recounted that a decision to use it seemed almost inevitable. "The (OSP) captain walked up to me and told me they were gonna try the flash-bang," Henderson later told investigators. "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 to talk and talk and talk." Jackson County sheriff's Sgt. Terry Larson apparently overheard the conversation. "Somebody said, `Hey, we're gonna throw a flash-bang,' and Joe (sheriff's Deputy Joe Puckett) and Tanya (said), `Hey, we're still trying to talk to the guy, don't throw the flash-bang,"' Larson recounted. "The captain went forward and at that point they threw the flash-bang." The negotiators also were awaiting the arrival of a Jackson County mental health worker, who was en route to the scene. Use of the flash-bang was not unprecedented. Only two days before, Medford police had used a stun grenade to end a three-hour standoff at a Myrtle Street home. But this time the tactic did not work. The plan was to stun Smith and then yank him from his truck without bloodshed. Instead, Smith either hit the gas or let out the clutch (the flash-bang grenade landed in the bed of his truck, apparently where it was supposed to go) and rammed into two patrol cars. In the chaos that ensued, two officers armed with less-than-lethal beanbag shotguns fired at Smith soon after he came charging out of his truck. At almost the same time, three Medford officers also opened fire. Sgt. Jerry Burchfiel and rookie Officer Corey Schwab were armed with .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistols. Furst, armed with a fully automatic 9mm machine gun, fired three bursts. After hearing the shots, the OSP dispatch office, which had Smith's wife waiting on hold, ended the conversation. Officers came to her house later that night to tell her Smith had been shot. All five officers said they saw Smith trying to pull a black object from his jacket or waistband. Other officers saw the same thing. Some didn't see it or couldn't tell what he was doing. Paramedics rushed in to help Smith, who had been shot more than 20 times. Dr. James Olson, a deputy state medical examiner who was inside the station on unrelated business and saw what happened, quickly pronounced Smith dead. Olson recorded the time of death at 8:55 p.m. Detective Maurice "Mo" Austin, an OSP arson investigator, described the glum scene afterward. Austin had been directing traffic on Highway 99 and didn't see what happened, but he could tell which officers fired. "You could tell by the look on their faces," he told investigators later. "I've been an officer long enough. You could tell." See also: Excerpts from police transcripts How the Cole Smith shooting unfolded Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA