Calloway takes leadership role at OSP Area Command in The Dalles
Lieutenant Jason Calloway is the new patrol leader at The Dalles Oregon State Police Area Command. He began the job on Jan. 1.
By Tom Peterson
The Dalles, Ore, Jan. 16, 2024 — Nothing is right.
Everything just looks wrong in the photo.
The gray skin of the Dodge Charger is peeled off from the passenger door to the license plate.
The car stands still awash in a pool of its own radiator fluid. The rear tires sit 6 feet over the fog line and rest in gravel.
The front passenger tire is missing.
The undercarriage is resting on asphalt.
The push bumper - a mangled hand - has twisted into the bent hood.
Behind the smashed windshield, a white deployed airbag.
It was from this wreckage that Jason Calloway emerged.
This photo hangs in Lt. Calloway’s office. It’s a reminder about the terms of the job and what is possibly at stake every day.
The Oregon State Police Trooper had just rammed a white Mustang - one that had been clocked at more than 130 MPH on I-84 in a 50-mile tactical pursuit that started west of Cascade Locks.
Calloway had followed Nicholas William Temkow, then 46, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, from Hood River.
Temkow exited on offramp 82 at The Dalles only to see police vehicles waiting for him.
Temkow turned the Mustang around and drove back toward I-84 in the wrong direction - headed west toward the eastbound lanes and oncoming traffic.
It was Spring Break, 2022, - March 18 - and Calloway said innocent bystanders were driving on that highway - people visiting. People just going to work.
And a fiery triple fatal four months before hung in Calloway’s mind. The head-on, the fault of a wrong-way driver on I-84, ended in a fireball that took the lives of two Condon residents on Nov. 30, 2021, just east of The Dalles.
“There was no way I could let him get on the freeway,” Calloway said.
Calloway rammed that Mustang, disabling it. Stopping Temkow.
Destroying the patrol vehicle.
Here is a photo of the white Ford Mustang after Trooper Calloway rammed the vehicle to prevent it from entering Interstate 84 in the wrong direction and hitting innocent bystanders.
The photo of Calloway’s totaled patrol vehicle hangs on his new office wall here in The Dalles.
It’s a reminder, he said.
A reminder of why he does the job. A reminder of the sacrifice it takes. A reminder of what a trooper must be prepared to do to keep people safe.
Calloway grew up the child of a deputy in Baker City.
And the Oregon State Police was held out as the epitome of professionalism when he and his dad chatted about his possible career routes.
Calloway signed on with the Wasco County Sheriff’s office in 2004 and spent 5 ½ years as a patrol deputy.
He was hired as an OSP Trooper in 2009 and became a patrol sergeant in 2017. He was elevated to Lieutenant in 2022 where he took on OSP internal investigations in the Office of Professional Standards.
Calloway officially became the Field Operations Lieutenant in The Dalles on Jan. 1, where he oversees up to 17 patrol troopers who are responsible for Hood River, Wasco, Sherman, Gilliam and Wheeler counties. Sergeants Mark Jubitz and Adam Shiner fill out the supervising team.
But Calloway said he expects every trooper to be a leader in their own right, taking the incentive to follow through on tasks, and taking control when events dictate them to do so - emergencies where people are at risk of being hurt.
“I want them to be leaders,” he said. “I want that mindset. It will lead to the best area command in the state.”
Calloway lives in Dufur with his two kids and his wife, who is a nurse at Adventist Health Columbia Gorge.
Staying in the Gorge was a family decision.
Calloway had the opportunity to advance several years ago, taking a position with OSP in LaGrande.
He asked his daughter about moving.
“It’s difficult for kids to leave and reestablish,” he said. “She cried, and that was my answer.”
Calloway summed up his goals simply as excellence and accountability.
“No one can be perfect but we can all be excellent at what we do,” he said, noting it was perseverance that had made all the difference in his life.
“Nobody can take away your work ethic. Sure, somebody can be bigger or faster, but no one can take away your heart and your drive.”
Here is CCCNew’s original story about Calloway ramming the Mustang.
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