Some business owners in this crime-plagued city say recent enforcement of a decades-old ordinance banning some types of barbed and razor wire is making Newark more attractive to thieves.
Burglaries are up 17 percent from 2007 through November in Newark....
John DeSantis, owner of a lot used by an auto-repair business, says his property has had more than a dozen burglaries since the summer, when the city forced him to remove razor wire on top of the 7-foot-tall fence that surrounds the lot.
"The bottom line was, they said, 'It doesn't look good and we want to create a new image for the city of Newark,' " DeSantis said.
....DeSantis said he was surprised when a city official told him the ordinance was being enforced to prevent passers-by or anyone climbing the fence from being injured by the barbed wire.
"I said that maybe if a few of these thieves were injured, the word would get around that 'Hey, we can't do this anymore,' " he said.
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