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NEWARK, N.J. — Some business owners in this crime-plagued city say recent execution of a decades-old sacrament 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 authoritative inaction, inability and guiltiness.

The city is aggressively courting of the present day investment and disentanglement, but people who have been ordered to downgrade their fences say officials are worried added 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 incorporated town forced him to remove razor wire on highest part 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 produce a new object of worship for the city of Newark,’ ” DeSantis before-mentioned.

The order was backed up through a antecedently little-used 1966 ordinance that states: “No barbed wire fence or other fence or wall having barbed or sharp projections facing outward, or else endangering the traveling public, shall be permitted adjacent to or along the line of any public way 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’session great quantity since barbed wire was removed from a fence over the summer at the incorporated town’sitting behest.

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

DeSantis uttered 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 suppose that a few of these thieves were injured, the expression. would get around that ‘Hey, we can’t do this anymore,’ ” he declared.

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