{"id":12408,"date":"2023-12-03T09:31:23","date_gmt":"2023-12-03T09:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cooncampsprings.com\/?p=12408"},"modified":"2023-12-03T09:31:23","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T09:31:23","slug":"neighborhood-saw-crime-drop-by-82-after-resident-erected-a-buddha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cooncampsprings.com\/travel\/neighborhood-saw-crime-drop-by-82-after-resident-erected-a-buddha\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% after resident erected a BUDDHA"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Revealed: Californian neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% &#8211; after fed-up resident erected a BUDDHA STATUE<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The statue is located on a traffic divider in Oakland&#8217;s Eastlake area\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><span>It was put there by resident Dan Stevenson as a random attempt to deter crime<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE:\u00a0Etiquette expert&#8217;s tips on tackling awkward restaurant moments<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A non-religious man fed up with crime and vandalism in his neighborhood managed to transform the area &#8211; with a store-bought Buddha statue.<\/p>\n<p>Dan Stevenson and his wife Lu had lived in\u00a0Oakland&#8217;s Eastlake area for 40 years and learnt to live with rampant crime, including muggings, assaults and drug-dealing.<\/p>\n<p>But Dan&#8217;s capacity for tolerance expired when people began using a traffic divider with a space in the middle &#8211; visible from his home about 500ft away &#8211; as a &#8216;garbage dump&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>To deter criminals and litterers, the pair bought a small Buddha statue from ACE Hardware and fixed it to a concrete slab on the divider, located\u00a0at the intersection of East 19th Street and 11th Avenue. The result? Some might say miraculous &#8211; crime plummeted.<\/p>\n<p>Why a Buddha? Speaking about the effect of the statue, installed in 2009, on the\u00a0Criminal podcast<span> in 2015, Dan said: &#8216;<\/span>Because he\u2019s neutral. I mean, if we threw Christ up there, he is\u00a0controversial. But Buddha, nobody seems to be that perturbed in general about a Buddha.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/28\/10\/78318023-12762803-image-a-2_1701168460884.jpg\" height=\"420\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Oakland resident Dan Stevenson installed a store-bought Buddha statue on a traffic divider (above) in his neighborhood of\u00a0Eastlake &#8211; a random attempt to deter crime\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/20\/15\/78019325-12762803-Above_is_the_Buddha_statue_in_Oakland_California_purchased_from_-a-1_1700494693511.jpg\" height=\"547\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Dan purchased the Buddha (above) from ACE Hardware. Picture courtesy of Creative Commons licensing\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Initially, Dan hoped the presence of the &#8216;neutral figure&#8217; would bring a sense of peace to the neighborhood &#8211; but he did not expect it to completely transform the area.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the Criminal podcast&#8217;s host, Phoebe Judge, he said: &#8216;It was probably about maybe four months or something of him just sitting there being concrete. But one morning, I wake up and look over and the Buddha is white. Someone has come and painted him a soft white.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>From then on, people began &#8216;leaving little gifts&#8217; of oranges or coins. One day Dan said he came home from work to find a sack of pears but had no idea &#8216;where they were coming from or what they represented&#8217;.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The podcast revealed that people &#8216;from all over the neighborhood&#8217; began visiting the Buddha, with Phoebe commenting that what began as a\u00a0&#8216;truly random attempt to curtail dumping and crime&#8217; became a &#8216;sacred place for members of Oakland&#8217;s Vietnamese Buddhist community&#8217;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/20\/12\/78019779-12762803-Picture_courtesy_of_Creative_Commons_licensing_https_creativecom-a-23_1700483121275.jpg\" height=\"438\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Pictured are offerings of fruits and flowers to the Buddha. Picture courtesy of Creative Commons licensing\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Not only that, but after the Buddha was installed &#8216;crime pretty much disappeared&#8217;, according to Dan.<\/p>\n<p>Dan said that locals know he was responsible for the statue&#8217;s appearance and sometimes offer him gifts by way of thanks, from fruit to wine and even bottles of whiskey.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dan admitted he had no idea why the Buddha has been so effective, citing superstition, fear, or respect as possible explanations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The decrease in crime was highlighted by reporter Chris Johnson in an article for the\u00a0San Francisco Chronicle (published online in the\u00a0San Francisco Gate) in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The reporter asked the police to check their crime statistics for the block radius around the statue and found crime had dropped significantly.<\/p>\n<p>On the findings, Chris\u00a0wrote: &#8216;Since 2012, when worshipers began showing up for daily prayers, the overall year-to-date crime rate dropped by 82 per cent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Robbery reports went from 14 to three, aggravated assaults from five to zero, burglaries from eight to four, narcotics from three to none, and prostitution from three to none.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Chris asked a police statistician about the data, who commented: &#8216;I can&#8217;t say what to attribute it to, but these are the numbers.&#8217;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/27\/15\/78283571-12762803-image-a-1_1701100457720.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>After the Buddha was installed crime in Eastlake dropped by 82 per cent. Above is a general view of Oakland\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Buddha still stands today in 2023 &#8211; having had multiple upgrades over the years.<\/p>\n<p>People added gold-draped clothing, placed it on a &#8216;rock pedestal&#8217; and there are now three huts.<\/p>\n<p>And while its long-term effect on crime is uncertain, it&#8217;s definitely popular.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Noted as a &#8216;Place of Worship&#8217; on Google, it attracts visitors from across the country and has gained a 4.9-star rating from 80 reviewers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One reviewer, Sarah Nichols, who visited the Buddha earlier this year, wrote: &#8216;The Buddha of Oakland is still here! I\u2019ve been hoping to see it since I learned 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.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Photos show various offerings placed within the huts, from religious symbols, flowers, candles, and fruits to photographs of Buddhas and LED lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/travel\/article-12762803\/Californian-neighborhood-saw-crime-drop-82-fed-resident-erected-BUDDHA-STATUE.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revealed: Californian neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% &#8211; after fed-up resident erected a BUDDHA STATUE The statue is located on a traffic divider in Oakland&#8217;s Eastlake area\u00a0 It was put there by resident Dan Stevenson as a random attempt to deter crime READ MORE:\u00a0Etiquette expert&#8217;s tips on tackling awkward restaurant moments A non-religious man [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% after resident erected a BUDDHA - cooncampsprings.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cooncampsprings.com\/travel\/neighborhood-saw-crime-drop-by-82-after-resident-erected-a-buddha\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% after resident erected a BUDDHA - cooncampsprings.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Revealed: Californian neighborhood saw crime drop by 82% &#8211; 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