Plywood patrol car stolen in Oregon

By Carrie Petersen - Albany Democrat-Herald
2/15/05

The plywood cutout of a sheriff's office patrol car along Spring Hill Drive was stolen sometime early Sunday.

The owner of the cutout, Rick Pyburn, said he called the Benton County Sheriff's Office Sunday morning after realizing it was gone.

"I called them to say I was reporting a stolen patrol car," Pyburn said.

They got a kick out of that, he said, because the sheriff's office knows about him and his cutout patrol car.

Despite his humor, Pyburn, who is making more cutouts, said this was the first one he made. "This one I wanted to keep."

Pyburn made the cutout last fall in an attempt to get drivers to slow down and "it worked," he said.

"We've had a lot of fun with it," Pyburn said.

The next cutout he puts out will most likely have to be chained or bolted down, "and that's too bad," he said.

The cutout was made by enlarging a photo on vinyl and then posting it on plywood.

It was put up in some bushes along Spring Hill Drive on a straight stretch past the Spring Hill County Club.

Pyburn is making a couple more patrol cars and has plans for making other cutouts, such as children, dogs and chickens, to get drivers to slow down.

Pyburn wants to create anything to make "people realize that when they're driving down rural highways, they're driving through someone's neighborhood."

Several of Pyburn's real chickens have been killed on Spring Hill Drive and the previous owner of the property had four dogs killed on the road.

The cutout was worth about $300, according to the sheriff's office report.

The sheriff's office has no suspects.

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