Six months into 2023, Memphis finds itself caught between two competing realities. On one side, a police department trying to reform itself while maintaining public safety with fewer officers than it’s had in years. On the other, a private security industry experiencing the fastest growth it’s seen in a decade, filling gaps that the public sector can’t or won’t.
Neither of these facts exists in isolation. They feed each other. And understanding how they intersect is the only way to make sense of where this city stands heading into summer.
This is the halfway report: the numbers, the trends, and the forces shaping security in Memphis through June 2023.
Crime by the Numbers
The headline statistics aren’t encouraging. Homicides through the first half of 2023 are tracking above 2022’s pace, which is a deeply alarming sentence when you remember that 2022 produced 528 killings in Shelby County. If the current trajectory holds through December, Memphis will record another year of violence that ranks among the worst in its history.
Motor vehicle theft has been the most dramatic statistical story. More than 6,000 vehicles were reported stolen through May alone. That number had been climbing for three consecutive years already, but 2023 turned a serious problem into an outright crisis. The Kia and Hyundai vulnerability accounts for a large share of the increase, though carjackings, a separate and more violent crime category, have risen alongside traditional car theft.
Property crime has spread into neighborhoods that historically considered themselves insulated. Midtown, traditionally one of Memphis’s more stable residential areas, has seen a noticeable uptick in burglaries and car break-ins. East Memphis, long regarded as the city’s safest corridor, isn’t immune either. The Laurelwood shopping area and neighborhoods near Germantown Parkway have reported increased larceny and vehicle-related crimes. When property crime creeps into affluent zip codes, the political pressure to respond intensifies quickly.
Part 1 crimes across the board, the FBI’s classification for serious offenses, are running above 2022 levels. Aggravated assaults remain the most common violent crime by volume, outnumbering homicides roughly ten to one. Domestic violence incidents continue to represent a significant portion of assault numbers, a fact that tends to get lost in discussions focused on street crime and gang activity.
Five Months Without SCORPION
The disbanding of the SCORPION unit on January 28th remains the defining event of MPD’s year. Five months later, the aftershocks haven’t stopped.
Operationally, SCORPION’s dissolution removed roughly 60 officers from proactive street-level enforcement in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Those officers were reassigned to other duties. The specialized saturation patrol model they executed hasn’t been replicated. No new unit has been created to fill that role. Chief Davis has spoken about reimagined community policing strategies, but the specifics remain vague and the implementation slower than many residents in high-crime areas would like.
The five former SCORPION officers charged in Tyre Nichols’s death are awaiting state trial. The legal proceedings will stretch well into 2024, keeping the case in the news cycle and maintaining the political pressure on MPD leadership. Every use-of-force incident involving Memphis police now gets scrutinized through the Nichols lens, which has made officers more cautious in their interactions. Whether that caution is appropriate restraint or counterproductive hesitation depends entirely on who you ask.
Calls for a federal Department of Justice investigation into MPD’s patterns and practices have grown louder since January. As of mid-June, no formal investigation has been announced, but sources close to the process suggest it’s a question of when rather than if. A DOJ consent decree would impose years of federally supervised reform on the department, something that has produced mixed results in other cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago.
MPD’s Staffing Crisis
The department’s headcount tells its own story. MPD is operating with fewer than 2,000 sworn officers, a number that hasn’t been this low in over two decades. The authorized strength is considerably higher. Authorized positions and filled positions are different animals.
Recruiting has been difficult across American policing since 2020, and Memphis has it worse than most. The city’s relatively low officer pay, high violent crime rate, and the national spotlight on the department after the Nichols case have combined into a recruiting headwind that no signing bonus can fully overcome.
Retention is the other half of the problem. Experienced officers, the ones with ten or fifteen years on the force who know their precincts cold, are leaving for suburban departments in Collierville, Bartlett, and Germantown that offer comparable or better pay with a fraction of the danger. Some are leaving law enforcement entirely. Every departure takes institutional knowledge out the door that can’t be replaced by a fresh academy graduate.
The practical effect on residents is measurable. Average response times for Priority 1 calls (imminent threat to life) remain within acceptable ranges, but Priority 2 and 3 calls (burglaries in progress, disturbance calls, suspicious person reports) can sit in queue for 30 minutes to an hour or more in some precincts. That gap is where private security has inserted itself most visibly.
Private Security’s Moment
The private security industry in Memphis is valued at an estimated $180 to $220 million annually, encompassing everything from one-person guard operations to large regional firms running hundreds of posts across the metro area. That number has been growing steadily for a decade, but 2023 has accelerated the trend dramatically.
Several factors are converging. MPD’s reduced capacity has created direct demand for private security at commercial properties, residential communities, and special events that previously relied on police presence. Business owners who used to request off-duty MPD officers for weekend security at their establishments are discovering that fewer officers are willing to take the extra shifts. Private guard companies are filling that void.
Insurance companies have also become a driver. Commercial property insurers in Memphis are increasingly requiring documented security measures (guard service, camera systems, access control) as conditions of coverage. A warehouse on Holmes Road or a retail property in Hickory Hill that can’t demonstrate adequate security may face premium increases of 20 percent or more, or lose coverage altogether.
Wages across the industry have risen accordingly. Entry-level unarmed guard positions that paid $10 to $11 per hour two years ago are now advertising at $13 to $15. Armed guards are pulling $17 to $22 depending on assignment and experience. The wage increases are necessary to compete for workers in a tight labor market, though they’re also compressing margins for security companies that locked into fixed-rate contracts before the increases hit.
TDCI’s updated training requirements, which phased in during late 2022 and early 2023, are adding costs to the operational side as well. Companies are investing in better training infrastructure and spending more time qualifying guards before deployment. The upside is a better-prepared workforce. The downside is longer onboarding timelines at a moment when clients want guards on post yesterday.
Bright Spots in a Difficult Year
Not everything in the first half of 2023 has been grim. The Beale Street Music Festival in May came off without major security incidents. That’s not a small thing for an event that draws tens of thousands of people into a concentrated entertainment district in a city dealing with elevated gun violence. The coordination between MPD, private security firms, and event organizers produced a visible, layered security presence that deterred problems without creating a fortress atmosphere.
Several Memphis neighborhoods have launched community-driven safety initiatives that show promise. Binghampton’s community development corporation has organized regular block walks and partnered with local businesses to install shared camera systems. Crosstown, anchored by the Crosstown Concourse development, has maintained remarkably low crime rates for its geographic position through a combination of active property management, private security, and genuine community engagement.
The Orange Mound community, one of the city’s oldest historically Black neighborhoods, has been working with both MPD and private security consultants on a violence interruption model that targets known conflict networks. Early results are modest, but the approach has produced evidence of effectiveness in cities like Richmond and Oakland.
What the Second Half Looks Like
The honest forecast for July through December is cautious. Summer will test every resource the city has. The combination of extreme heat, school being out, and seasonal spikes in violent crime creates a pressure cooker that Memphis hasn’t solved in good years, let alone difficult ones.
MPD will continue operating shorthanded. The recruiting pipeline won’t produce meaningful headcount improvements before 2024 at the earliest. The Nichols case will remain in the background of every policing discussion, affecting both officer behavior and public trust.
Private security will keep growing. Every week brings new contract inquiries from businesses and HOAs that have decided waiting for public safety improvements isn’t a viable plan. The companies that invest in training, technology, and professional operations will separate themselves from the low-bid operators who send untrained guards to posts with nothing more than a reflective vest and a cell phone.
The city’s trajectory isn’t fixed. Memphis has shown resilience during difficult stretches before. The institutions, both public and private, that are responsible for safety have more tools and more data than they’ve ever had. Whether those tools get deployed effectively is a question of leadership, resources, and political will.
Six months down. Six months to go. Memphis knows what it’s dealing with now. The second half will show whether knowing is enough to change anything.