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.
