On July 27, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a pattern-or-practice investigation into the Memphis Police Department. Six months later, the investigation is still ongoing, the findings haven’t been released, and Memphis is trying to figure out what policing looks like in the meantime.
For anyone in the security industry, this isn’t just a law enforcement story. It’s a market story. Every constraint placed on MPD creates demand somewhere else, and that somewhere else is private security.
How We Got Here
The timeline matters because it explains the current mood inside MPD.
On January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols was pulled over by officers from the SCORPION unit near Raines Road and Ross Road in Southeast Memphis. He died three days later from injuries sustained during the arrest. The SCORPION unit, a specialized crime suppression team, was disbanded on January 28, 2023. Five former officers were charged with second-degree murder in state court and later indicted on federal civil rights charges. Their federal trial is expected sometime later in 2024.
The DOJ’s investigation, announced six months after Nichols’ death, isn’t about those five officers specifically. It’s broader. Federal investigators are examining MPD’s patterns of use of force, stops, searches, and arrests. They’re looking at whether the department engages in discriminatory policing. They’re reviewing training protocols, internal accountability systems, and the supervision structure that allowed a unit like SCORPION to operate the way it did.
This kind of investigation typically takes 18 to 24 months. We’re at the halfway point, roughly speaking, and there’s been no public report of preliminary findings.
What’s Changed Inside MPD
Talk to officers at MPD and you’ll hear two things. First, morale is low. Second, proactive policing has dropped.
Neither statement is surprising. Pattern-or-practice investigations create a chilling effect on aggressive policing tactics. Officers who might have conducted a traffic stop based on reasonable suspicion now weigh whether that stop could end up in a federal report. The calculus has shifted from “is this legally justified” to “could this look bad in a DOJ finding.”
CJ Davis, who became interim chief in January, inherited a department under federal microscope. Mayor Paul Young’s new administration has publicly committed to cooperating with the investigation. That cooperation is strategic. Cities that fight DOJ investigations (like Ferguson, Missouri did for years) end up with consent decrees imposed by federal judges. Cities that cooperate often negotiate less restrictive agreements.
Some changes are already visible. MPD has implemented new use-of-force reporting requirements. Officers now document stops and searches with more detail. The department has expanded its crisis intervention training, and there’s been a push to get body camera compliance rates closer to 100%.
These are voluntary reforms, the kind a department implements to show good faith before the DOJ issues its findings. Whether they’re deep enough to satisfy federal investigators remains to be seen.
The Officer Exodus
The DOJ investigation didn’t cause MPD’s staffing crisis, and the staffing problem started well before Tyre Nichols’ death. The department has been losing officers faster than it can hire them for years. As of late 2023, MPD was operating with roughly 1,800 sworn officers, well below its authorized strength of approximately 2,300.
The investigation accelerated the trend. Experienced officers who were already considering retirement moved up their timelines. Some transferred to suburban departments in Germantown, Collierville, and Bartlett, where pay is comparable and federal scrutiny is absent. Younger officers with less than five years on the job have been leaving for private sector positions at higher rates than before.
A Shelby County criminal justice source I spoke with estimated that MPD lost between 200 and 250 officers in 2023 through retirements, resignations, and terminations. Recruiting classes haven’t kept pace. The academy can only process so many cadets per cycle, and the applicant pool has shrunk as the profession’s reputation takes hits nationally.
Fewer officers means slower response times. Slower response times mean more demand for private security. The connection is direct and measurable.
What This Means for Private Security
Here’s where it gets concrete for the security industry.
When a police department pulls back from proactive patrol, property owners and businesses fill the gap with private guards. This happened in Baltimore after the Freddie Gray case and the subsequent DOJ consent decree. It happened in Chicago after the Laquan McDonald shooting reshaped CPD’s approach to street enforcement. The pattern is consistent: federal oversight of police departments drives private security growth.
In Memphis, this effect is already showing up. Security company owners I’ve talked to over the past three months report increased inquiries from commercial property managers, retail chains, and residential communities. The requests are specific. Clients don’t just want a guard at the front door. They want patrol coverage, they want armed officers, and they want visible deterrence that signals safety to tenants and customers.
One property management company in East Memphis told me they’ve doubled their security budget since mid-2023. “Our tenants see the crime numbers. They read about the police investigation. They want to know what WE are doing about safety,” the operations director said. “The answer is more guards, more patrols, more cameras.”
The demand surge creates its own problems. As we’ve covered before on Memphis Security Insider, the guard shortage means companies can’t always fill the positions clients are requesting. The irony is sharp: the same conditions driving demand for private security make it harder to supply.
The Legal Gray Zone
The DOJ investigation raises questions about the boundary between public and private law enforcement that most people haven’t considered.
Private security guards in Tennessee operate under T.C.A. section 62-35-101, regulated by TDCI. They can detain individuals under shopkeeper’s privilege and citizen’s arrest statutes. They can carry firearms with proper licensing. They cannot, however, conduct traffic stops, execute search warrants, or exercise the broad discretionary authority that sworn officers hold.
As private security takes on a larger visible role in Memphis neighborhoods, the risk of scope creep increases. A guard hired to patrol a shopping center parking lot might encounter a situation that would normally be an MPD call. If response times stretch to 20 or 30 minutes, that guard is making judgment calls in a legal space that isn’t clearly defined.
Several attorneys I’ve spoken with have flagged this as a growing liability concern. Property owners who hire security guards could face civil suits if a guard overreaches their legal authority during an incident. Training programs at security companies need to address this gap explicitly, drawing a hard line between observation-and-report duties and actions that belong exclusively to sworn law enforcement.
The Consent Decree Question
Nobody knows yet what the DOJ will recommend when the investigation concludes. The possibilities range from a negotiated agreement with voluntary compliance measures to a full consent decree overseen by a federal monitor.
Cities under consent decrees face years of federal oversight. The monitor reviews policies, audits compliance, and reports to a federal judge. In some cities, consent decrees have lasted more than a decade. Cleveland’s consent decree from 2015 is still active. New Orleans entered one in 2013 and is just now approaching the end of oversight.
If Memphis ends up under a consent decree, the effects on the private security market would be significant and long-lasting. A constrained MPD, operating under federal guidelines that limit certain policing tactics, would create sustained elevated demand for private security services across Shelby County.
For security companies planning their 2024 and 2025 growth strategies, this isn’t speculation. It’s a scenario they need to plan for.
The Community Divide
Public opinion in Memphis on the DOJ investigation splits along familiar lines.
In neighborhoods like Orange Mound, Whitehaven, and Frayser, where residents have long reported tense interactions with police, the investigation is welcome. Community organizations in these areas have been documenting complaints about MPD practices for years. For them, the DOJ’s involvement validates what they’ve been saying.
In other parts of the city, there’s frustration that the investigation is making Memphis less safe. Business owners along Summer Avenue and in the Medical District worry that officers are pulling back from the proactive policing that keeps crime away from their doors. “I need police to actually police,” one restaurant owner near the University of Memphis campus told me. “Right now it feels like everyone’s afraid to do their job.”
Both perspectives have merit. The challenge for Mayor Young’s administration is addressing legitimate concerns about police misconduct without creating a public safety vacuum. So far, the administration has tried to thread that needle by supporting the investigation publicly while also emphasizing crime reduction initiatives like the city’s Real Time Crime Center and community-based intervention programs.
Six Months In, A Long Way to Go
The DOJ investigation of Memphis police is at its midpoint, at best. The federal team is still collecting evidence, interviewing officers, and reviewing records. The findings report, when it comes, will be hundreds of pages long and will likely describe systemic issues that predate the Nichols case by years.
For Memphis’s security industry, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Plan for a market where private security demand keeps growing, where clients expect more from their security providers than a warm body at a gatehouse, and where the legal environment around private security authority gets more complicated.
The five former SCORPION officers will face a federal jury later this year. The city will watch that trial closely. Whatever the verdict, it won’t end the DOJ investigation or resolve the larger questions about how Memphis is policed.
What it will do is keep the spotlight on Memphis. And as long as that spotlight stays on, the calls for private security keep coming in.