The meeting started at 7 p.m. in the fellowship hall of a Baptist church on Walnut Grove Road, and by 7:15, every folding chair was taken. About sixty residents from High Point Terrace showed up on a Tuesday night in February to talk about one thing: hiring a private security company to patrol their streets.
They’re not alone. Across Memphis, neighborhood associations and homeowner groups are pooling money to put private guards in marked cars driving their blocks at night. The trend has been building for two years, and in 2019, it’s accelerating. Chickasaw Gardens has had private patrols for years. Colonial Acres started one last fall. HOAs in Cordova are negotiating contracts. Even Midtown neighborhoods like Cooper-Young, where residents tend to be skeptical of anything that resembles heavy-handed policing, have been discussing the idea at community meetings since late 2018.
The math is simple. MPD is stretched. Residents are tired of waiting 45 minutes for a response to a property crime call. And private patrol companies are happy to fill the gap at rates that work out to less than a Netflix subscription per household.
How Neighborhood Patrols Actually Work
The typical setup looks like this: a neighborhood association or HOA contracts with a TDCI-licensed security company to provide marked vehicle patrols during specified hours. Most neighborhoods want coverage between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., though some extend that to include early evening hours on weekends.
The security company assigns one or two officers in a marked patrol car to drive the neighborhood’s streets on a randomized route. The officers check for suspicious vehicles, test garage doors and gates, note any unusual activity, and serve as a visible deterrent. If they see something criminal in progress, they call 911 and stay on scene until MPD arrives. They don’t make arrests. They don’t chase suspects. They observe, report, and deter.
Cost varies by company, coverage hours, and neighborhood size. For a neighborhood of 200 homes wanting overnight patrols seven days a week, the monthly bill typically runs between $3,000 and $6,000. Split among homeowners, that’s $15 to $30 per household per month. Some HOAs fold it into existing dues. Others create a separate assessment.
“Twenty dollars a month for peace of mind? That’s the easiest vote our board ever took,” said a Colonial Acres HOA member who attended their November meeting when the patrol contract was approved. Roughly 80% of homeowners in the neighborhood voted in favor.
The Neighborhoods Leading the Way
Chickasaw Gardens, the upscale enclave near East Parkway and Central Avenue, has run private security for longer than most residents can remember. The neighborhood’s association contracts for both vehicle patrols and a manned gatehouse at certain entry points. Residents there pay a premium for the service, and most consider it as essential as landscaping or street maintenance.
High Point Terrace, the neighborhood east of Highland Street between Spottswood and Southern, started seriously exploring private patrols after a string of car break-ins in late 2018. The burglaries hit nearly every street in the neighborhood over a three-week period. MPD took reports. An arrest was made weeks later. Residents decided they didn’t want to wait for the next wave.
Colonial Acres, situated between Quince Road and Walnut Grove near White Station, launched its patrol program in November 2018. The neighborhood’s tight street grid and limited entry points make it relatively easy to patrol effectively. Early reports from residents have been positive, with several noting that the break-in activity that plagued them in the summer dropped off noticeably once the marked patrol car started making rounds.
Out in the suburbs, the pattern repeats with different details. Cordova neighborhoods along Macon Road and near Shelby Farms have been contracting security patrols for years, often through their HOAs. Germantown, technically its own city with its own police force, sees less demand for private patrols within city limits, though neighborhoods along the Memphis-Germantown border sometimes hire them to cover gaps in jurisdiction response.
The newer trend is in Midtown. Cooper-Young, the neighborhood anchored by the intersection of Cooper Street and Young Avenue, held a community meeting in January where private patrols came up during the public comment period. The discussion was lively. Some residents worried about the optics of a private security car driving through a neighborhood that prides itself on diversity and community policing. Others pointed to the catalytic converter thefts that have been hitting the neighborhood since fall.
No decision was made at that meeting. A follow-up is scheduled for April.
Working Alongside MPD
One of the most common questions at these neighborhood meetings: does hiring private security create problems with the Memphis Police Department?
The short answer is no. MPD has publicly acknowledged that private patrols are a legitimate supplement to police coverage. Officers in the neighborhood precincts generally appreciate having another set of eyes on the streets, particularly during overnight hours when patrol units are thin.
The relationship works when expectations are clear. Private security officers don’t carry police authority. They can’t pull people over, search vehicles, or detain suspects beyond what any citizen could do under Tennessee law. Their job is to be visible and to report what they see. When a patrol officer spots a car prowler working a dark street, they call 911 and keep eyes on the suspect until a cruiser arrives.
“We’re not trying to replace the police. We couldn’t if we wanted to,” one security company supervisor told me. His firm runs patrols in four Memphis neighborhoods. “We’re the motion sensor light. We make it uncomfortable for someone to work a neighborhood at 2 a.m. because there’s a car with a spotlight driving by every 20 minutes.”
Some neighborhoods coordinate directly with their MPD precinct. High Point Terrace’s association has invited the local precinct commander to attend meetings and discuss how private patrols can complement police coverage rather than duplicate it. The precinct has been receptive, sharing information about crime patterns and peak activity times so the security company can adjust its routes accordingly.
There are limits to that cooperation. MPD won’t share sensitive intelligence or ongoing investigation details with private security companies. They won’t dispatch faster to a neighborhood because it has a private patrol contract. The relationship is informal and dependent on the individuals involved: a cooperative precinct commander in one district might be followed by one who doesn’t see the value.
The Money Question
For many neighborhoods, the decision to hire private security comes down to whether enough homeowners will pay.
HOAs with mandatory dues have it easier. If the board votes to add security patrols, the cost gets rolled into the quarterly assessment and everyone pays. Neighborhoods without a mandatory HOA structure face the free-rider problem: some residents will pay, others won’t, and the ones who don’t still benefit from the patrol driving past their house.
Some associations handle this by making participation voluntary and setting a minimum enrollment threshold. If 60% of homeowners opt in, the patrol happens. If not, it doesn’t. This model works in tight-knit neighborhoods where social pressure fills in for legal obligation. It works less well in larger, more transient neighborhoods where half the residents are renters.
The cost sensitivity is real. At $20 per month, most homeowners don’t blink. At $40 or $50, the questions start. “What exactly am I getting for that?” becomes the opening line at every community meeting. And it’s a fair question.
The honest answer is: you’re getting a deterrent. Crime statistics in neighborhoods with private patrols generally trend downward after patrols begin, though it’s hard to isolate the cause. Did the patrol deter the criminals, or did crime drop for other reasons? Did the burglars just move two streets over to the neighborhood without a patrol car?
Chickasaw Gardens would tell you the patrols work. Their property crime rates are consistently lower than comparable neighborhoods without private security. Colonial Acres saw a measurable drop in car break-ins after their patrol started. Anecdotal evidence, yes. Convincing to residents who are weighing $20 a month against another smashed car window, absolutely.
What to Look For in a Patrol Company
Not all security patrol companies deliver the same quality. Here’s what neighborhood associations should evaluate before signing a contract.
Licensing first. The company must hold a valid TDCI contract security company license. Every officer working the patrol must be individually registered with TDCI. Ask to see current documentation. A company that can’t produce it on request is a company you don’t want.
GPS tracking matters more than you’d think. A patrol company that can show you real-time and historical GPS data proving their officer drove your streets at the times specified in the contract is a company that holds itself accountable. Without GPS tracking, you’re trusting the officer’s word that they actually completed their rounds. Some companies provide monthly reports with GPS route maps.
Communication protocols deserve scrutiny. How does the patrol officer reach your residents if something is wrong? Some companies use a dedicated phone number or app. Others leave door hangers. The best ones assign a supervisor who is the direct contact for the neighborhood association president.
Check references from other neighborhoods they patrol. Call those association presidents. Ask whether the company follows through on its commitments, how responsive they are to complaints, and whether the same officers work the patrol consistently. High turnover in patrol officers means your neighborhood is constantly being patrolled by someone unfamiliar with the area.
Finally, ask about insurance. If a patrol officer is involved in an incident on your property or in your neighborhood, the company’s liability coverage protects the association from exposure. Verify the coverage amounts and make sure the policy is current.
A Trend That Isn’t Going Away
The demand for private neighborhood patrols in Memphis reflects something that residents don’t usually say out loud at these church meetings: they’ve adjusted their expectations of what city services can provide. MPD runs roughly 2,000 sworn officers for a city of 650,000. The response time math doesn’t work for property crimes, and everyone in that fellowship hall on Walnut Grove Road knows it.
Private patrols aren’t a fix. They’re a patch. They make residents feel safer, and the data suggests they reduce opportunistic property crime. They don’t address the root causes of why someone is breaking into cars in High Point Terrace at 3 a.m. They just make that particular block a harder target.
More neighborhoods will sign contracts this year. The conversations are already happening in Berclair, in Raleigh, in East Memphis pockets that have never considered it before. Each one will hold a meeting at a church or a community center, debate the cost, worry about the optics, and eventually decide that $20 a month is a price they’re willing to pay.
The folding chairs will fill up. They always do.