Criminal - He's Neutral

Episode Date: January 30, 2015

Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an issue for as long as he can remember, but he isn't one to call the police on drug dealers or sex workers. He's a pretty "live and let live" kind of guy. Or he was. Before he finally got fed up and took matters into his own hands. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things, and it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system,

you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new, reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature, Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. You know, we've had muggings in this neighborhood, you know, we've had muggings and, you know, aggressive behavior, aggravated assaults, and all kinds of things over the years here. You know, so it is an issue for lots of people. There's maybe like five or six years ago, you know, the community group gave everybody whistles

in case somebody, especially women or something, were accosted or somebody was following them. They just have to blow their whistle and alert other people that something was up. This is Dan Stevenson. He and his wife Lou have lived in Oakland, California for 40 years. They live in a two-story purple Victorian in a neighborhood called Eastlake. He says the crime's been an issue there for as long as he can remember. But when you live in a city long enough, you just learn to deal with it. You know, a couple of times,

some guys tried to get my wallet and just city stuff that, you know, once you live in a city long enough, you've got to at least be accosted a couple of times or you're not there. Once you know everybody's position, you know, as you go outside, you know who they are and where they are

and what they do. It's no, there was no hassle. So once you knew that, once you knew that the drug dealer was a drug dealer, you just went about your business and he did his business and you did yours. That's correct. Yeah. And you just stayed out of each other's way. Right. I mean, I wouldn't, like, I wouldn't call the police. Why? Well, well, first, first of all, I wouldn't call the police. Why?

Well, first of all, I don't trust the police. I probably trust a drug dealer more than I trust a cop. So that's part of it. Part of it has to do with the times I have called the police. They just don't seem to be able to come in and do it in a commonsensical way. They have to come in like an army or something over somebody selling drugs. I don't really care about that. It's one thing not to call the cops when you suspect a guy down the block might be selling drugs.

But it's another thing when there's a man right outside your bedroom window at 3 a.m. This is what happened to Dan and Lou about five years ago. My wife was here and we went to bed. About 3 a.m. she nudges me and says, there's somebody on the deck. Dan says he actually built a special deck to keep random people from wandering up there. There are no stairs. You have to climb partly up a tree and then lift yourself up over the railing. So I get up and I look out and sure enough, there's a guy on the deck. And so I yell

through the door and tell him to get off the fucking deck. And he kind of is totally gone. I mean, the exchange we had was like this guy was strung out on something big time, and he was just out to lunch. So my wife wanted me to call the police, but I thought if I call the police, they're going to come, this guy's just, you know, screwed up. He's of no danger that I could see. He didn't have any weapons or anything. He's just out of it.

So we started the talk. It took Dan 45 minutes, but he talked the guy down. Nobody got hurt. If he had gone the official route with the cops, he says it would have been a real pain. And then I'd have been up for another two hours, you know, filling out reports with him. By, you know, within 45 minutes, I was back asleep and it was all good. But even this guy, the most patient, live and let live guy in the neighborhood, eventually hit his limit. And when he got fed up, he did something desperate. Something that makes absolutely no sense to anyone, maybe least of all to Dan himself. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. What wound up pushing Dan over the edge wasn't drug dealers or sex workers.

It was garbage. A gigantic pile of garbage. The city put in a traffic diverter across the street from their house. It's about 500 feet from their front door. A concrete divide with a space in the middle with trees, and nobody took care of it. Nobody took care of it, and so it became a de facto garbage dump. People that were moving decided that that would be a place to move everything they didn't want to take with them. So the stack could be like six, eight feet high sometimes with dressers and mattresses and garbage and bags of crap and clothing. I mean, it's just intense.

And it's been a big problem with Oakland for years all over the place. You know, somebody will dump whatever they have in your front yard if you're not careful. Dan says he'd watch trucks pull up at night and unload mountains of furniture and garbage. And he called the city and called and called and called. So you would wake up in the morning sometimes like eight feet to like an eight foot pile of crap yeah yeah and if if if the city didn't come fast enough it could get higher because once you have it's like a magnet once you've got a stack of stuff other people think oh there's an idea and they keep stacking it. So what did you decide to do about it? Well, that was, that is a good question. Lou and I discussed this for quite some time and we came up with the idea of a Buddha, to put a Buddha there. Are you Buddhist? No, we have nothing to do with Buddhism at all.

But you figured if there's one thing that might help here, it's Buddha. Well, yeah, because he's neutral. I mean, if we threw Christ up there, he's controversial. Everybody's got a deal about him. But Buddha, nobody seems to be that perturbed in general about a Buddha. So Dan and Lou had made up their minds, and it turns out they had a lot of options. You know, we looked at the different ones, and she picked out one that she liked the most

because they come out of a concrete cast. So some of them looked more mellow than others. Lou went off to Ace Hardware and picked one out. Which she brought home, and I liked him. He looked cool to me. And then he sat in the basement for about three or four months because I couldn't figure out a way to put him over there without having him stolen or ruined, and those things would have really pissed me off.

So finally I came up with a plan, and I drilled into him and put epoxied rebar into his body, and I fixed the Buddha so he'd be looking at at our house in fact looking through the window where I could look at him so when I get up in the morning and have my coffee I could look over and see how he was doing wait are you allowed to do this it feels like this is this is breaking some sort of city code oh uh allowed uh that's another thing. It's best not to ask before you do things because it's always no. You kind of just do it and see what happens. these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence

in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system,

you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new, reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Dan didn't tell his neighbors about his plan. He dragged some extension cords from his house and used a drill to affix the Buddha to a slab of concrete. And that was it.

And there he was. It's like a surprise. And he just sat there. How long before something happened? 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 Buddha's white. Somebody's come and painted him a soft white.

This was someone had kind of carefully done this on purpose. Oh, very carefully. I mean, there's no like paint around him or anything. I mean, strictly whoever did it took care in painting. And, you know, I thought that's interesting. And then after that, you know, he'd have an orange. And pretty soon two oranges and maybe a pear. Just as mysteriously as Dan had installed the statue,

people began leaving little gifts, oranges or coins. One day he said he came home from work and there was a big stack of pears, and he had no idea where they were coming from or what they represented. I assume now, because of what has happened, that the Vietnamese community decided that he needs to be cared for. And from there, it just grew to where it is today, which is a total shrine. Yeah, will you describe what the Buddha looks like right now?

Well, the Buddha now is, like, upgraded considerably. I mean, he's gold now. His eyes are painted in and he's got a gold-draped clothing. He's just really top drawer, cool-looking Buddha. I mean, he's come a long ways in terms of his dress. Now he sits on kind of a rock pedestal kind of thing that's either granite or something. And then he has a house that you could probably live in if you were a single person and small. The house is now around Buddha, so Buddha's protected from the rain and such?

Oh, yeah. And so if you wanted to pray there, which they do constantly, you just slip inside the little building and you kneel down and Buddha's there. And he's got other friends of Buddha's, you know, and there's a big Kuan Yin outside, which is, you know, the goddess of mercy. But what do you mean when they come to pray? Who's coming there? Do people come there often? Every morning at 7 a.m., they pray.

And they have this little clacker thing. It's like a little drum. It goes clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. And sometimes they'll set up tables and have a feast, you know. And they put out food and all these people come and they pray and they go through that. And they eat and they have a kind of a community. Do you ever go out and introduce yourself? Oh, they know who I am. So they know that you are the man who brought the Buddha from Ace Hardware in 2009.

And there lies the problem. Yes, because at every feast day, they bring over a stack of food and fruit and wine and a bottle of whiskey one time, and just presents for... To thank you. Yes, yeah. And I keep telling them, thanks a lot, but there's only like Lou and I, and we can't eat all this stuff. But these aren't like your neighbors bringing over food.

These are people who are coming to visit Buddha from other neighborhoods and appreciating what you started. Yes. And they all bow. And none of them speak English, so I bow and we all bow. It's embarrassing kind of for me because I don't even know what they're thinking. But I keep trying to tell them that it's their Buddha and good luck with them and adios. But they don't kind of go for that, you know.

How many people are coming? How many people are coming on a daily basis, would you say, to see the Buddha? Oh, at least 70. A day? A day, yeah. And then there's also the tourist thing. You know. They'll knock on my door and they're from Minneapolis and somebody on Facebook posted something. They want to take my picture with

them in front of the Buddha. It's just for me, as cynical as I am, this is like, what is happening? Remember, Dan and Lou put the Buddha up as a sort of desperate shot in the dark, a truly random attempt to curtail dumping in crime. And he accidentally created a sacred place for members of Oakland's Vietnamese Buddhist community. But that's not the end of the story. Oh, the crime has pretty much disappeared in a sense. The drug dealing definitely is gone, and so is the prostitution. I mean, there's none, zero, within quite a distance from our area now. But it's a slow process that I didn't really notice it happening and didn't even think of it in those terms until I read it in the paper.

In September, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle did a story on Dan and the Buddha and asked the Oakland Police Department for the updated crime statistics for the neighborhood. Here's what he wrote. Since 2012, when worshipers began showing up for daily prayers, overall year-to-date crime has dropped by 82%. I mean, I think we all have some respect for religious symbols, whether it's the religion that we ascribe to, whether we ascribe to a religion at all. I mean, there's something rather sacred about things like this. Well, I agree. And I don't know if it's superstition or whether Buddha says don't fuck with this or what. I have no idea. But it works. So you're right. I think people do have a feeling of either respect or fear. I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. Crime is down 82%.

I guess it doesn't. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr, Eric Menel, and me. Special thanks to Alex Belair for her help with the recordings. Julian Alexander does our episode art. You can find out more about the show at thisiscriminal.com. And you can check out the other Radiotopia shows at radiotopia.fm, like Strangers, hosted by Leah Tao. Her latest episode deals with crime and mental illness,

focusing on a father and son. I call my wife. I go, Nina, Matthew, kill somebody. She goes, oh my God, Steve, oh my God, Steve, oh my God, Steve, oh my God. I go, babe, just hold on. I'll be there in a minute.

Get home. I gave her the newspaper. She's just in total shock. That's the latest episode of Strangers. It's really great. You should go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system, you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation.

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