Critics rip Newark barbed-wire ban

NEWARK, N.J. — 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, which has a young, charismatic mayor who has vowed to help the city rebound from decades of official inaction, incompetence and criminality.

The city is aggressively courting new investment and development, but people who have been ordered to downgrade their fences say officials are worried more about aesthetics than security.

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.

The order was backed up by a previously little-used 1966 ordinance that states: "No barbed wire fence or other fence or wall having barbed or sharp projections facing outward, or otherwise endangering the traveling public, shall be permitted adjacent to or along the line of any street or public place."

The Rev. C.H. Thomas of the Church of Christ, across the street from DeSantis' lot, told The Star-Ledger of Newark that thieves have broken into several cars in the church's lot since barbed wire was removed from a fence over the summer at the city's behest.

Despite a steep drop in homicides in the last year, robberies and aggravated assaults rose along with burglaries in 2008.

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.

Melvin Waldrop, director of the department of neighborhood and recreational services, which oversees code enforcement, did not respond to a request for comment, but his office said 132 properties were cited for violating the 1966 ordinance in the city last year.