Why in the world does a Family Dollar—where almost every product is $1—need a security guard? What does this say about the clientele? What does this say about the community this store serves?
Everything.
Flint, Michigan is 54 percent black and 37 percent white.
Shot.
(TNS) — Tamara Liberty Smith of Detroit says her social media feed reflects the deadly impact of the coronavirus in Michigan’s largest city, one that also has the most black residents.
“I’ve never experienced anything in my life where my social media timeline looks like an obituary,” said Smith, a lifelong Detroiter who ran a failed bid for Detroit City Council in 2017. “You cannot scroll … not knowing someone who has been attacked by the virus or who has experienced death from the virus.”
The pandemic has shed light on the disproportionately high number of deaths in the black community, especially in Detroit where nearly 80 percent of the population is black. Detroit has seen the highest number of cases and deaths due to coronavirus, with 922 deaths as of Sunday.
Statewide, 32 percent of all confirmed coronavirus cases in Michigan involved black patients, yet they make up about 13.6 percent of the state’s 10 million people. More than 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the state are African Americans.
Underlying health issues within the black community, poverty that restricts access to medical care, crowded living situations and a general lack of trust in the health system are some of the theories put forth for the high rate of COVID-19 among people who are black.
Smith lives in west Detroit on the border of the 48235 ZIP code, an area hardest hit by the virus hit, based on city health data.
She called it “baffling” that Detroit has been impacted so harshly, since “a lot of the Detroiters are not travelers; they’re stationary.”
“From my perception, this was brought into our city and the people are contracting it,” she said. “How? That part I’m still wondering (about) … A lot of Detroiters don’t even leave the city, let along the country, and the virus is running rampant.
Other than some youth who feel impervious to the virus, Smith said most people she knows are practicing social distancing and isolation in line with the governor’s orders.
State Rep. Tyrone Carter, a coronavirus survivor, points across a busy street from his front porch to a field on the outskirts of Detroit.
“There used to be a hospital there,” he says.
Carter said a lack of access to quality, affordable health care in the black community is one of many reasons the coronavirus has killed a disproportionately high number of black people in Michigan and Detroit.
Chaser.
Michigan security guard killed at Family Dollar store after asking customer to wear mask, KTLA.com, May 3, 2020]:
A security guard at a Family Dollar store in Flint, Michigan, was shot and killed after telling a customer to wear a state-mandated face mask, police said.
Calvin Munerlyn, 43, died at a local hospital after he was shot in the head Friday, said Michigan State Police Lt. David Kaiser.
The shooter and a second suspect remain at large, Kaiser told CNN on Monday.
Witnesses at the store told police that Munerlyn got into a verbal altercation with a woman because she was not wearing a mask, said Genesee County prosecutor David Leyton. Surveillance video confirms the incident, Leyton said.
Under an executive order from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, all retail employees and customers have to wear a mask.
Footage also shows that immediately after the altercation, the woman left in an SUV.
But about 20 minutes later, the SUV returned.Two men entered the store and one of them yelled at Munerlyn about disrespecting his wife, Leyton said. The other man then shot the security guard.
“This is senseless. Over a mask. Over a mask?” Munerlyn’s cousin, Tina James, told CNN affiliate WJRT. “This is not the way to do things right now. We need to come together.”
Family Dollar did not respond to a request for comment.
Calvin Munerlyn was a black male who was employed at the Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan to provide security at a store where nearly every product is $1. The city of Flint is 54 percent black (63 percent nonwhite), and Mr. Munerlyn asked a black customer of the Family Dollar where he provided security to put on a mask to stop the potential spread of Coronavirus. She refused and came back with two black males. They participated in his murder, invalidating the claim Black Lives Matter and that white people are somehow responsible for black deaths during the Coronavirus.
45-year-old Sharmel Teague, 44-year-old Larry Edward Teague Jr., and 23-year-old Ramonyea Bishop were all arrested for his murder. They are all black.
Why are blacks dying disproportionately of the Coronavirus across the United States? Why do black engage in a disproportionate amount of violent (both as victim and suspect) in violent crime across America? The answer to both questions is what great men like Carleton Putnam dared to address during his life on this planet, so that his posterity would live free of the insanity of egalitarian thinking.
I’m sorry this happened to you, Calvin Munerlyn.
But in what type of community does a Family Dollar need a security guard? The question answers itself.
