Newark barbed wire ban helps criminals

Crime: Just me but Newark seems to have this in reverse.

Some business owners in this crime-plagued city say recent enforcement of a decades-old ordinance prohibiting some types of barbed wire 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 outright 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 in Newark's West Ward, says his property has been the site of 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.

Just a radical idea, but wouldn't it be better that you work on the crime first which would lead to a new image which would lead to businesses not putting up or keeping up barbed wire?