In a rare bout of bipartisan support, NYC council members from both sides of the aisle blamed “lack of shoplifting enforcement” after a CVS worker stabbed a serial thief to death during a fight on Friday – a less than subtle dig at Manhattan’s liberal District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The furor erupted in the hours after Scotty Enoe, 46, knifed the 50-year-old would-be bandit in the torso after being punched, making it the latest in a disturbing string of self-defense killings in recent months.

“I’m sorry the man died. But I cannot exist in a world where we pretend that endemic theft without consequence can continue in perpetuity,” fumed Minority Leader Joe Borelli.

“Can Alvin Bragg maybe help with that? These aren’t exactly capers, he just chooses not to prosecute and we end up with vigilante justice.”

NYC Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks, chair of the Public Safety Committee, agreed that failure to prosecute retail theft is ruining the local economy, public safety, and quality of life for all New Yorkers.

“Retail theft is a top concern across the City. Failure to enforce and mitigate shoplifting as a crime only leads to it becoming a more pervasive problem,” emphasized the Democrat from Staten Island.

Stealing in New York state is charged as a misdemeanor provided the pilfered stuff was collectively worth less than $1,000 and no weapons were used — a classification that made the crimes ineligible for pre-trial detention under the state’s bail laws enacted in 2019.

Before the overhaul was passed, judges frequently used bail to hold repeat offenders or those they feared would likely offend again even though state law barred it.

Criminal justice reform advocates and defense attorneys said ad-hoc pre-trial detention amounted to a two-tiered justice system that treated those who could afford bail differently from those who couldn’t.

Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed through a series of tweaks in 2022 that partially restored the ability for judges to order pre-trial detention for crimes like shoplifting if the person had already been charged on a similar allegation and had been released to await trial.

In Queens, Democrat Councilman Robert Holden, said that District Attorney Melinda Katz had teamed up with the NYPD and local shops in three precincts to bar frequent shoplifters from stores they’ve allegedly hit under the state’s trespassing law.

“We have to start doing something about this retail theft because it out of control,” he said, pointing to the CVS case.

“If you just look at the facts,” he added. “The person who was unfortunately killed made the unfortunate decision to come back and rob the same store a repeated number of times.”