Anthony Holzhauer, 65, was lodged in the Jackson County Jail Monday without bail on charges of first-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon-aggravated assault and harassment after an altercation and alleged stabbing. 

Eagle Point police are rolling out the first of four new patrol vehicles with a vinyl design penned by a Southern Oregonian who has an extensive history of designing hot rods and custom vehicles for major manufacturers.

Jason Hulst of Grants Pass has a background in vehicle design going back more than two decades, designing everything from rides at Disney parks to one-off “image vehicles” for top automakers, but the rollout of Eagle Point’s new Chevy Silverado and Dodge Durango patrol cars this week mark the first time Hulst’s designs have appeared on law enforcement vehicles.

In a phone interview with the Rogue Valley Times, Hulst said he and his team at the Grants Pass-based weapons accessories and design firm ERA3 took on the job because he’s known Eagle Point Chief Jim Hamilton since they were kids growing up in Grants Pass. Hamilton spent 31 years at Grants Pass police before being sworn-in as Eagle Point’s chief last summer.

When Hamilton approached him for a fresh design for their new cruisers, Hulst and his team at ERA3 didn’t hesitate.

“Of course, I jumped all over that,” Hulst said.

In addition to the Silverado and Durango patrol vehicles on the streets now, his design will be fitted to two Chevy Tahoe cruisers, with the police pursuit package rolling out in the coming weeks, according to the police department.

Hulst grew up in Grants Pass and learned California hot rod design and building techniques from his father. From there he earned his bachelor’s of fine arts in graphic design from Oregon State University, and a bachelor’s of science in transportation design from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. He worked for Disney for about a decade doing ride vehicle design before pivoting to television production work at the company’s studios in Burbank.

His work for Disney in the ‘90s and early 2000s included ride vehicle design and a pivot to television production work for cartoons such as “Lilo & Stitch” and “Kim Possible.”

Hulst moved back to Southern Oregon in the mid-2000s to start and raise a family, and founded Hulst Customs in Merlin with his father as a designer and fabricator. There, Hulst helped design custom vehicle “image builds” for major manufacturers such as Ford that would be shown at auto and aftermarket trade shows.

One of his proudest accomplishments came in 2009, when the Southern Oregon company designed Shelby American’s first “Super Snake F-150” pickup, which sold about 100 examples in its limited run its first year.

He sold off Hulst Customs about five years ago to focus full-time on his work as creative director at Grants Pass-based fabrication company ECS Composites, which is ERA3’s parent company and a Department of Defense contractor that manufactures transit cases and dust-free packaging suitable for military, commercial and aerospace uses.

At ECS, Hulst has access to state-of-the-art design and fabricating equipment that includes a full machine shop with rotational molding equipment to implement his ideas, Hulst said.

“It’s quite an amazing place,” he said.

A subtle flourish in the patrol vehicle design is the geometric design baked into the dark sections of the two-tone look. The pattern is Hulst’s patented DSRPT Camo textured in matte and glossy sections. Hulst said that when incorporating the pattern — a design Chief Hamilton requested — he knew that the implementation would need to be subtle.

“It’s a service vehicle,” Hulst said. The words “Police” and “911” are reflective, he noted, making the vehicles’ purpose clear at a glance.

Hulst said the camouflage design is one he hopes will one day be as synonymous with ERA3 as the distinctive turquoise boxes are for Tiffany & Co. The design is scalable, meaning ERA3 can use it for everything from AR-15 builder kits to vehicle wraps to soft goods, bags and belt buckles.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records show Hulst and ERA3 founder Dennis Sterling Becklin were granted a patent for “Substrate with Camouflage Pattern” in May 2023. A provisional application was filed in August 2018, and they formally filed the patent in August 2019. The patent for the proprietary design, among other facets, describes a “plurality of shapes,” a “plurality of straight lines including at least one acute angle,” and a design that in some embodiments corresponds “to an appearance of a topographical map.”

Hulst said the design was years in the making. He started with World War I-era “dazzle camouflage” as one inspiration, topographic maps as another.

“Technically, it’s designed to confuse rather than conceal,” Hulst said. “I dove pretty deep into the camouflage world.”