An Oregon man is facing a felony charge over a curb that has been painted “lipstick red.” Defendant Allen Buzzard will face trial over the incident in February. What started as a misdemeanor at Brownsville Municipal Court has escalated into a felony charge with a maximum sentence of five years in prison and fines of $125,000. We learn more about the case from Penny Rosenberg, a regional editor for several newspapers in the Pacific Northwest. She has reported on the issue and continues to follow the case.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with the case of painting the town red. A man in Brownsville has been charged with criminal mischief, a felony that could result in five years in prison, after city officials say he painted a curb red. Penny Rosenberg wrote about this case as the editor of the Albany Democrat Herald, and she joins us now. Welcome to the show.
Penny Rosenberg: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. Can you describe this curb?
Rosenberg: Well, it’s fairly nondescript, except for the color now. This is a neighborhood that is pretty nice, the homes are probably $400,000-$600,000, they’re pretty modern and new, and the street’s about 22 feet wide. And maybe there are 14 homes that have people traversing it.
So why the need to paint this particular curb red? I’m not totally sure, even after talking to the defendant.
Miller: And we’ll get to that in just a second. You’ve said this is sort of a lipstick color, a vivid one, as opposed to the kind of red that is normally applied to certain curbs saying absolutely no parking here. You talked to a couple who live near the curb in question. What did you hear from them about what happened?
Rosenberg: Initially, I wasn’t quite sure who the defendant was. I knew that it was illicitly painted. So I hit the neighborhood and started knocking on doors, and I knocked on the house across the street from it and introduced myself as a journalist. They immediately froze, their eyes got really big, and they just said “Oh, we can’t talk to you, we are witnesses for the prosecution.” So apparently they saw the alleged deed, and said they’d be willing to talk afterwards. It was a couple, and as the man retreated into the house, he told me “oh, it’s a wild one,” and then he said “Only in Brownsville,” which is open to interpretation.
Miller: It’s tantalizing. You basically were told “we have stuff we wish we could tell you, but we can’t, you’re going to have to wait.”
You mentioned the defendant, his name is Allen Buzzard. What have you been able to learn about him?
Rosenberg: Well, he is what you would probably call a gadfly. He’s probably not what you think of as a hardened criminal. I could only find one speeding ticket that he got, and he fought that as well. He is now retired, but when he worked professionally he was a middle school social science teacher. And a lot of people do know him, in fact, one of the comments on our Facebook post about the story said, this reader said as she was reading it, she thought to herself “wow, that sounds like my teacher.” And I kind of buried his name way down in the story, and then she’s like “oh my gosh, it is my teacher, Mr Buzzard!” So I think his reputation may precede him.
Miller: That reputation includes what seems like, in recent years, at times a contentious relationship with city officials. What did you learn?
Rosenberg: Well, I dug through a lot of minutes because I’m fairly new to Lynn County and Brownsville. And he seems like the type that you might call a curmudgeon, or gadfly, they probably call themselves government watchdogs, but every city has one or more. And he attended a lot of meetings, he often spoke in the public comment section. And it looked like he was angling for a new position. He had previously served on the budget committee and he applied again, and he was turned down. I think maybe his politics don’t completely mesh with the current council, and there seems to be a little bit of bad blood between him and the city administrator, for reasons that aren’t completely clear other than perhaps their politics don’t match up. But there were words said. The defendant called the city administrator “a dictator” in one meeting, that was in the minutes. Those minutes are pretty detailed.
Miller: You also noted that Allen Buzzard in recent years has become a very vocal advocate for traffic safety, or crosswalk safety. What has he done?
Rosenberg: Well, he did acknowledge that there was an incident that sparked his campaign for safer streets, especially for pedestrians and intersections. There was a man in a wheelchair who was crossing Main Street, which as the name implies, is actually a busy street. And he was hit by a pickup truck. And that really motivated him to look at streets, speeding, and crosswalk safety.
But he never mentioned this particular street, and I don’t know exactly the nexus between that campaign and this street of all the streets in Brownsville, why this one. That is what I can’t answer. I’m going to have to go to court and find out exactly why this particular curb of all curbs.
Miller: Obviously, he is facing a criminal trial, so he has to be careful with what he says in public. In fact, we reached out to him this morning, and he said he couldn’t answer any questions on the advice of his lawyer. Did he tell you anything about this particular case?
Rosenberg: Not so much. He kept saying how much he wanted to, and that he had a lot to say. And he didn’t want to get off the phone, but in the end he didn’t say a whole lot other than yes, that incident with the man in the wheelchair definitely sparked something in him, and yes, he’s got a story to tell. He vowed to appeal it if it doesn’t go his way. He’s talking like somebody who, if he has the wherewithal, could take it a lot further than circuit court. We shall see. A lot of people have a lot of bluster at the beginning of these things, but they can get expensive. He does seem to have a pretty good side hustle as an Airbnb host, he’s a super host. So maybe that will fund his legal campaign. It was initially a misdemeanor.
Miller: Let’s get to that. So how did this go from a misdemeanor to a felony, criminal mischief in the first degree, which is a much more serious charge?
Rosenberg: So, the curb was painted in April of last year. So this has been going on for a bit. And there may have been some attempt to solve it more at a compliance level, and when that didn’t happen, when he dug in his heels, it was turned over to the District Attorney’s office that initially charged it as a misdemeanor. And then the district attorney turned it over to a grand jury in November, I believe it was. The grand jury came back and said “okay, it’s a felony.”
So it definitely escalated where you would think maybe this is just a compliance issue. It’s not really code enforcement, like a city requires a building to look a certain way. These are state laws, in terms of streets and safety and things like that. So the city of Brownsville is considered the victim in this case, they’re not the prosecution. It’s not in the district attorney’s hands as a criminal matter.
Miller: Why is it that the curb hasn’t been repainted yet?
Rosenberg: Well, I asked that. If a shop becomes burglarized and the window gets broken, they don’t leave the broken window while the cogs of justice grind. They repair the window. But for whatever reason, the city council gave instruction to the city workers not to repaint it. I’m not sure why. I thank them for that, because then I could find that lipstick red, not quite professionally painted curb to take photographs of. So I do appreciate that for selfish reasons. But why they left this out there just kind of like an open wound, I don’t know. But there it is for anyone to see. It’s the corner of Butte Street and North Avenue.
Miller: As a longtime journalist, as a reporter and now an editor, you have covered or edited stories about all kinds of traumatic events that often could include death. What has it been like to write about something where, even if we’re talking about a charge of criminal mischief in the first degree, a felony, it’s hard to argue that this is n’t a less serious issue than some of the things you might often write about?
Rosenberg: Oh, for sure. And I’ve had a little fun reporting on it. I definitely think the character of Brownsville, whether it’s the city council or the city administrator or the neighbors, it’s kind of showing a little bit of that. And it was too enticing to pass by. I am having a little bit of lighthearted laughter over it, especially in light of all the events recently, the mass shootings that we’ve had in the past week, that’s from my old hometown area. It’s like a journalistic break, a little bit of fresh air.
And I don’t mean to make light of it because it is pretty serious. But like I said, this guy is not a hardened criminal. He’s pushing it. And so if he’s going to push it, I’m going to report it.
Miller: Penny Rosenberg, thank you very much for joining us.
Rosenberg: Thank you so much.
Miller: Penny Rosenberg is the editor for a number of papers in the mid-Willamette Valley, the Albany Democrat Herald, the Corvallis Gazette Times and also The Daily News in Longview, across the Columbia River. She joined us to talk about the case of the Brownsville man who is facing a felony charge for allegedly painting a curb red.
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