By Charles Layton
Neptune police said Friday that Mark Alan Nicastro of Ocean Grove has been charged in a third burglary case.
Nicastro, 50, had already been charged with forcibly entering a summer home on the second block of Embury Avenue on January 12 and with burglarizing an apartment on Mt. Hermon Way on January 3. On Friday, he was also charged with burglarizing a home on Mt. Hermon Way on September 28, 2010. “The charges were the result of the continuing investigation into his activities,” according to a police press release.
Nicastro was identified as an unemployed house painter residing on Embury Avenue in Ocean Grove. He is being held at Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold on $50,000 bail.
It’s true that some crimes are committed by folks who live in the Grove, but I suspect many more by outsiders. [I wish I had a picture of whoever took my bike from my side yard last summer — I bet he rode it out of town.]
Cameras would no doubt help deter crimes and help solve some crimes too. If this was Pennington, they would be unecessary, but we live wedged between some pretty dodgy towns and we clearly need to do more than we are doing now. Cameras are cheaper than extra police and they are ever vigilant.
Another article raised many calls for cameras to check who goes in and out of Ocean Grove. Sounds like a police state to me.
And, as this arrest shows, Ocean Grovers can carry out crimes.
In the immortal words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”