Suppressing The Human Instinct
You can’t legislate these primal instincts away, but the Regime’s anarcho-tyrants seem to think they can.
I used to regard San Francisco as the anarcho-tyrannical capital of America, but now I realize it’s just a collapsed city. Instead, the capital of anarcho-tyranny seems to be our biggest city, New York.
On Thursday, July 6, a serial shoplifter was stabbed to death by an employee at a CVS Pharmacy store in the city in what the latter is claiming as a matter of self-defense:
The Manhattan CVS employee charged with fatally knifing a serial shoplifter allegedly told cops he did it out of self defense — as it was revealed the homeless thief was busted stealing from another store just days before his death.
Scotty Enoe, 46, was pummeled by Charles Brito without provocation inside the Midtown CVS just before 12:30 a.m. Thursday, after Brito swiped a container of creamer and Gatorade, according to Enoe’s lawyer and police sources.
Enoe, who suffers from sickle cell anemia and has no prior criminal history, has had run-ins with Brito before, the lawyer said.
“Apparently, there has been about four or five other contacts between my client and this particular guy. None of them resulted in a physical altercation, however, there were words exchanged that started with, ‘Don’t steal stuff from our store,’” said the attorney, Adam Freedman, after Enoe was arraigned on murder and manslaughter charges in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“On multiple prior occasions, this guy says, ‘I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you.’ It’s my understanding that before this incident there were basically no words exchanged. It was a walk up and this guy [Brito] initiated physical contact.”
Brito, 50, began wailing on Enoe, who then stabbed Brito eight times, piercing the thief’s heart and liver, according to a criminal complaint.
The worker, who had only been working the midnight shift at CVS less than a year, allegedly told cops: “I did not stab him over CVS products. I stabbed him over [him] punching me. Look what he did to my face.”
Enoe, who was taken to the hospital with contusions to the face, is charged with murder, manslaughter and two counts of weapons possession. Cops allegedly found a blood-soaked folding knife and brass knuckles on him. Bail was set at $100,000.
Freedman said Enoe may have had the knife on him because he was opening up boxes at work.
Enoe has since been released on that $100,000 bail, which was paid for by one of his other employers, not CVS. Good to know CVS cares for its employees!
It shouldn’t come as a surprise this story involves what’s become an all-too-common theme: repeat offenders who meet their demise at the hands of a citizen after the government fails to render justice:
The serial shoplifter fatally stabbed by a CVS employee was busted for stealing from another of the drugstore’s locations just four days before his death — and was set to be sentenced next week for a slew of other brazen incidents, The Post has learned.
Charles Brito, the 50-year-old homeless man, who was knifed early Thursday while trying to rob a CVS in Midtown, had more than a dozen prior arrests to his name — and had an MO for targeting drugstores, cops and sources said.
He was most recently picked up on July 2 on a petit larceny charge after snatching four Monster energy drinks and seven Starbucks Frappuccinos from a CVS store in Upper Manhattan just before 6 p.m., according to sources.
The serial offender returned to the store two hours later to fill up a suitcase with $125 worth of items, including Oreos, Pepsi, M&Ms, Hershey’s Kisses and more Starbucks drinks, the sources said.
The circumstances surrounding his release from custody in that incident weren’t immediately known.
We saw this in the case of Daniel Penny, the Good Samaritan who restrained Jordan Neely, a man with an active arrest warrant out on him who was harassing and terrorizing subway riders. Neely died at the hands of Penny and we can debate whether that was just or not, but we should be able to agree neither Neely nor Charles Brito ought to have been out and about on the streets like that.
Now, Scott Enoe, the man who confronted Brito and was assaulted by him, is facing a murder charge. It’s more than just insult to injury - with a chronic illness, life is already tough on the man, but it’s a level of state cruelty I used to think this country was above inflicting. I was wrong.
Nicole Gelinas writes in the New York Post about how big of a problem shoplifting has become in the city and how it puts businesses and their employees in dangerous, no-win situations:
The numbers show that supposedly minor shoplifting has become a crisis, one stemming from changes to New York criminal law and in how New York prosecutes that law. In 2019, the New York Legislature and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo reformed state laws to ensure that virtually no repeat shoplifters go to jail awaiting trial. In 2022, new Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg said that no matter what the law said, he wouldn’t prosecute shoplifting anyway. A person who “shoplifts and makes a minimal threat to a store employee while leaving . . . pose[s] no genuine risk,” he directed staffers.
Since then, petty theft has exploded in New York’s Midtown North Precinct, where both the Duane Reade and the CVS are located. In 2019, for the first half of the year, Midtown North recorded 979 petit larcenies (generally, shoplifting of minor items). By last year, they had reached 1,161, and this year, they are at 1,331.
That’s a 36% increase over four years, which is alarming enough — but it also far understates the case. For the first half of this year, for example, the NYPD’s CompStat map shows exactly one petit larceny at the Duane Reade on Broadway and exactly one at the CVS nearby.
These numbers defy reality. Conservatively speaking, a petit larceny happens at each of these locations at least once a day; more realistically, the rate is likely closer to hourly.
Speaking of both the Enoe and Penny cases:
And last Thursday, all this resulted in a death, ironically at the one area drugstore that has managed to maintain a clean, pleasant, orderly environment. Since the Rite Aid closed and after several bad experiences in the Duane Reade, I have used the CVS at 49th Street every time, even though it is farther away. It has seemed more like a normal, pre-2020 drugstore.
Last Thursday, though, just after midnight, 50-year-old Charles Brito entered the CVS, allegedly stealing energy drinks. In doing so, Brito repeatedly punched a 46-year-old store clerk, Scotty Enoe, according to Enoe’s account. Enoe stabbed him to death. Now Enoe, a gainfully employed man who reached middle age with no criminal record, faces a murder rap. He sits at Rikers Island on a $100,000 bail request.
His case is just the latest in at least four killings over late spring and early summer in which the accused killer has claimed self-defense in a violent incident stemming from supposedly minor disorder. In two of these cases, grand juries have agreed with the self-defense claims, declining to indict the accused killers; a third defendant, Daniel Penny, who killed Jordan Neely, a severely mentally ill and disruptive homeless man, on a subway in May, awaits trial.
New York City could have prevented all four of these crimes by doing what it used to do: policing disorder before it escalates to violence.
It’s important to remember: both Enoe and Penny had no criminal record prior to their respective encounters with crime and fate. Meanwhile, Brito and Neely, who died at the hands of Enoe and Penny, respectively, were all repeat-offenders.
I can’t help but see a not-so-subtle message being sent by charging Enoe and Penny with serious crimes: no matter how law-abiding, straight-and-narrow you live your life, in the eyes of the Regime, you’re no better than a thief. This isn’t an invitation to throw it all to the wind and start living life like a sinner - integrity is doing the right thing even when nobody’s watching - but to manage your expectations. The law may have once cared that you were an otherwise upstanding citizen, but there’s no guarantee of this any longer.
Of course, New York is New York and doesn’t represent the country at-large. But what I think has become obvious is, countrywide, a precedent is increasingly being set (at least in the more high-profile cases) where citizens are effectively being prohibited in practice, if not by law, from using violence to defend self and property. Yet if the Regime believes that tightening the vise-grip is going to reduce violence, they’re fatally mistaken. All it does is create more victims or create more situations where a person feels they need to respond with deadly force.
Here’s a perfect example. I’m not sure when and where this incident occurred, but it’s a perfect example of how self-defense laws force people to risk attack or even death before they’re permitted to lawfully exercise violence. As always, don’t watch if real-life violence upsets you (it’s a shooting):
https://twitter.com/ZebraRisk/status/1678442266321461273
I won’t comment on the legality of this shooting, but just ask yourself: if someone were backing you into a corner like that, at some point, would you not feel the need to physically push back? Regardless of the circumstances under how this incident occurred, the point is that even a cornered rat eventually lashes out or tries to run. You can’t legislate these primal instincts away, but the Regime’s anarcho-tyrants seem to think they can.
Of course, no shooting would’ve occurred had nobody had a gun. But the outcome could’ve also been quite different had there not been a gun and not necessarily for the better. The fact is, when faced with a stronger or more relentless assailant, deadly force is often the only recourse. This is something so many policymakers and on the Left don’t get. “De-escalation,” like everything else, has become a weaponized term, but you can only de-escalate a situation with someone who is otherwise acting in good faith. Someone who intends to intimidate and harm you by definition cannot be de-escalated.
It goes back to something I’ve said in my last post and through my time running this blog: the government can take all the guns away, but they cannot make people less violent by doing so. I’d add that they can make it legally impossible to employ violence in the interest of self-defense, but inevitably, some people will defend themselves, even to the point of killing their assailants. Why? Because when given the choice between living and dying, we’d rather live. The self-preservation instinct, as well as the instinct in some to protect others, is that powerful. What makes anarcho-tyranny, or tyranny in general, so cruel is that it tries to make people deny their own self-preservation instinct, to the point some people may choose victimization or even death over the possibility of being persecuted by the state.
It’s not a new problem. Not by a long shot. One of my favorite movies is a 1967 release The Incident. it’s about a New York City subway car that gets taken over by two thugs who harass and terrorize 14 passengers (sound familiar?), none of whom put up effective resistance. You can watch the film in its entirety on YouTube and I hope you’ll find time to do so, because it’s a classic (also actor Martin Sheen’s big screen debut):
The message of The Incident is this: when you condition people to be law-abiding and peaceful, you do so at the cost of rendering them incapable of responding when violence does find them. Even people who’d have no problem standing up to someone on the job or in a parking lot squabble suddenly cannot summon the same courage when someone who’s really bad news comes after them. Worst, when the people who are supposed to be there to protect you - the police, namely - aren’t there, you’re still afraid of getting into trouble. But for what, exactly? Protecting yourself?
Remember - that was 1967. Movies aren’t reality, but in some ways, they’re a reflection of what our society is and I’d argue that was more so back then than it’s now. If The Incident played on fears that were on the minds of Americans over a half-century ago, then it seems not much has changed since. Either that, or we’ve regressed.
Let’s go back to San Francisco, a city which has definitely regressed:
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Last year in San Francisco, there were more than 20,000 reported thefts from vehicles. ABC7 News reporter Luz Pena spoke to a San Francisco resident and business owner who has taken it upon himself to fight back and protect his neighborhood.
He’s lived in San Francisco for over 20 years and lately instead of going by his legal name, people call him “Boots.” “I’m called Boots. I'm working outside rather than inside.”
Covering his face with a ski mask to protect his identity, Boots walks around his neighborhood of Fisherman's Wharf with a non-lethal weapon that looks like a gun. His goal is to scare off thieves from breaking into cars.
"The criminals are getting to know us. I wouldn't call it an organized anything. It's just concerned citizens," said Boots and added, "Every day is a small victory. You chase them off from one corner. You chase them off from this street."
It’s unreal. This is some dangerous vigilantism and I’d never advise anyone to do this. But what did you expect? San Francisco might be beyond saving at this point, but it doesn’t mean some people won’t try, if only as a last-ditch effort. Despite the bad press, the city and its metro area are still where millions of people make their lives. Some, if not all, aren’t going to go down without a fight. I’ve often made the point that if a collapse comes, it’s going to be far less dramatic than people anticipate. At the same time, it doesn’t mean it’ll be entirely peaceful. Maybe far fewer people will put up a struggle than we think, but the point is, some will.
Maybe a nationwide breaking point will come, maybe it won’t. If recent events prove anything, however, it’s that many of us will reach our own individual breaking points as the country continues to unravel. I hope and pray that if you do, you’ll be spared the wrath of the state, which has clearly picked a side in this conflict.
It’s not our side.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!