Revealed: Californian neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% – after fed-up resident erected a BUDDHA STATUE

A non-religious man fed up with crime and vandalism in his neighborhood managed to transform the area – with a store-bought Buddha statue.

Dan Stevenson and his wife Lu lived in the Eastlake area of ​​Oakland for 40 years and learned to live with rampant crime, including robberies, assaults and drug dealing.

But Dan’s tolerance disappeared when people began using a traffic divider with a space in the middle – visible from his home about 500 feet away – as a “garbage dump.”

To deter criminals and litter, the pair purchased a small Buddha statue from ACE Hardware and mounted it on a concrete slab on the dividing wall, located at the intersection of East 19th Street and 11th Avenue. The result? Some might say it’s miraculous: crime went down.

Why a Buddha? Speaking about the effect of the statue, installed in 2009, on the Criminal podcast in 2015 Dan said: ‘Because he is neutral. I mean, if we throw Christ up there, he’s controversial. But Buddha, no one seems to be that concerned about a Buddha in general.”

Dan bought the Buddha (above) from ACE Hardware. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons licensing

Initially, Dan hoped that the presence of the ‘neutral figure’ would bring a sense of peace to the neighborhood, but he did not expect it to completely transform the area.

In conversation with the host of the Criminal podcast: Phoebe Judge, he said, “It was probably about four months or something of him just sitting there being concrete. But one morning I wake up and look around and the Buddha is white. Someone came and painted it soft white.’

From then on, people started leaving ‘little gifts’, such as oranges or coins. One day, Dan said he came home from work and found a bag of pears, but had no idea “where they came from or what they represented.”

The podcast revealed that people “from all over” began visiting the Buddha, with Phoebe noting that what started as a “really random attempt to curb dumping and crime” became a “sacred site for members of the Vietnamese Buddhist community of Oakland’.

Depicted are offerings of fruit and flowers to the Buddha. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons licensing

Not only that, but after the Buddha was installed, “crime all but disappeared,” according to Dan.

Dan said locals know he was responsible for the statue’s appearance and sometimes offer him gifts in gratitude, from fruit to wine and even bottles of whiskey.

Dan admitted that he had no idea why the Buddha was so effective, citing superstition, fear or respect as possible explanations.

The decline in crime was highlighted by reporter Chris Johnson in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle (published online in the San Francisco Gate) in 2014.

The reporter asked the police to check their crime statistics for the radius around the statue and found that crime had dropped significantly.

Commenting on the findings, Chris wrote: ‘Since 2012, when worshipers began showing up for daily prayers, the overall crime rate has fallen by 82 percent this year.

‘The number of robberies went from fourteen to three, serious assaults from five to zero, burglaries from eight to four, narcotics from three to none, and prostitution from three to none.’

Chris asked a police statistician about the data, who commented: “I can’t say what to attribute it to, but these are the numbers.”

After the Buddha was installed, crime in Eastlake dropped by 82 percent. Above is a general view of Oakland

The Buddha is still there in 2023, after having undergone several upgrades over the years.

People added gold-draped clothing, placed it on a ‘rock pedestal’ and there are now three huts.

And while its long-term effect on crime is uncertain, it is certainly popular.

Listed as a ‘Place of Worship’ on Google, it attracts visitors from across the country and has a 4.9-star rating from 80 reviewers.

One reviewer, Sarah Nichols, who visited the Buddha earlier this year, wrote, “The Buddha of Oakland is still there! I’ve been hoping to see it since I heard about it four years ago in 2019. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, but came to San Francisco for my birthday and a friend from Alameda helped me find the shrine.”

Photos show various offerings placed in the huts, from religious symbols, flowers, candles and fruits to pictures of Buddhas and LED lights.