The property manager for a Class A office building on Poplar Avenue told me something in July that I haven’t been able to shake. “We used to call MPD if something happened in our parking garage,” she said. “Now we call our security company first and MPD second, because we know which one is actually going to show up.”
She wasn’t being sarcastic. She was describing the new reality for commercial property management in Memphis. The Memphis Police Department is short-staffed. The SCORPION unit that used to provide aggressive, targeted enforcement in high-crime areas was disbanded in January after the beating death of Tyre Nichols. Response times for non-emergency calls have stretched. And property managers across Shelby County are adjusting.
The adjustment looks different depending on the property, the neighborhood, and the budget. What it doesn’t look like anymore is hoping the police will handle it.
The SCORPION Aftermath
The disbanding of SCORPION in late January 2023 removed one of MPD’s most visible enforcement tools. The unit, formally called the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, had conducted thousands of traffic stops and arrests in its years of operation. Five of its former members now face murder charges in the death of Tyre Nichols on January 7, 2023.
For property managers, SCORPION’s dissolution wasn’t just a headline. The unit had operated in areas where many commercial properties sit, running patrols that, for better or worse, created a visible police presence that property owners had come to factor into their security planning. With the unit gone and MPD already operating below authorized strength (the department had roughly 1,900 officers against an authorized force of about 2,500), the math on private security changed overnight.
“We started getting calls from property managers in February,” one security company owner told me. “People who had never contracted with us before. People who thought they didn’t need private security because police presence was enough.”
The Geographic Split
The shift isn’t uniform across Memphis. Where you manage property determines how urgently you’re rethinking security.
Downtown Memphis, which has seen significant investment in residential and mixed-use development along Main Street, South Main, and the Pinch District, faces a particular challenge. Downtown property managers rely on the Downtown Memphis Commission’s safety programs and MPD’s Entertainment District detail for nightlife areas. Private security supplements that, with officers patrolling parking garages, residential lobbies, and the areas around AutoZone Park and FedExForum. Several downtown property management groups increased their contracted security hours in the first quarter of 2023.
East Memphis, particularly the commercial corridor along Poplar Avenue from Highland to Germantown, has a different profile. The properties there are largely Class A and Class B office buildings, retail centers, and medical facilities. Crime rates are lower than in other parts of the city, and the tenant base expects a certain level of visible security as a condition of their leases. Property managers in this corridor aren’t panicking. They’re recalibrating, adding evening and weekend coverage where they previously relied on daytime-only posts.
Germantown operates its own police department, separate from MPD, and property managers there have historically had a more responsive law enforcement partner. The shift there is smaller in scale, though even Germantown properties along Germantown Parkway have added private patrols in response to auto theft and break-in trends that have crept east from Memphis proper.
How the Smart Ones Are Structuring Contracts
The property managers getting this right are doing three things differently than they did two years ago.
First, they’re moving from fixed-post guard contracts to hybrid models that combine a standing officer with mobile patrol coverage. A fixed post means one guard standing at one location for eight hours. It’s expensive per-hour and it covers exactly one spot. A hybrid model puts a guard at the main entrance during peak hours and a mobile patrol unit circulating the property (and sometimes a cluster of nearby properties sharing the cost) during off-peak times. The mobile unit provides visible presence across a larger area at a lower hourly cost.
Second, they’re requiring technology integration in their security contracts. GPS tracking on patrol vehicles is becoming standard. Property managers want to verify that the patrol car actually drove through their parking lot at 2:00 AM, not just a log entry saying it did. Daily activity reports with time-stamped photos give managers something to show their ownership groups and insurance carriers.
Third, they’re writing shorter contracts with performance benchmarks. The old model was a three-year security contract with annual rate increases baked in and very little accountability beyond showing up. Newer contracts run twelve to eighteen months with specific metrics: response times, incident reporting standards, officer retention rates on the account. If the provider misses benchmarks, the property manager can renegotiate or walk.
The Providers Competing for This Business
The national companies dominate the Memphis market by volume. Allied Universal, formed from the 2016 merger of Allied Barton and Universal Services and now the largest security company in North America, holds contracts across hundreds of Memphis properties. Their scale means they can staff large accounts quickly and absorb the liability insurance costs that make security contracting expensive.
Securitas, the Swedish-owned company that acquired Stanley Security in late 2022, holds the second-largest share. GardaWorld, the Canadian firm, has grown its Memphis presence in recent years, particularly in the logistics and transportation sector around the airport.
The national companies offer infrastructure that smaller firms can’t match: dedicated HR departments, regional training facilities, 24/7 operations centers, corporate liability coverage in the hundreds of millions. For a property manager running a 500,000-square-foot office park, that infrastructure matters.
Then there are the local and regional firms. Phelps Security, operating from 4932 Park Avenue and in business since 1960, has deep Memphis roots and a reputation built over six decades of local operation. They know the city in a way that a national company rotating managers through every eighteen months simply doesn’t.
Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company established in 1998 at 2682 Lamar Avenue, competes on a different value proposition. The firm offers statewide Tennessee coverage with GPS-tracked patrols and positions itself on competitive pricing and the credibility that comes with veteran ownership and former law enforcement staff. For a property manager looking for armed officer coverage without the overhead markup of a national company, that pricing argument carries weight. The trade-off is scale. Shield of Steel doesn’t have the corporate infrastructure of an Allied Universal. A property manager with fifteen locations across three states needs a provider that can operate in all of them under one contract, and smaller firms can’t always deliver that.
You can reach Shield of Steel at (202) 222-2225 or through shieldofsteel.com.
The Insurance Angle
Property insurance carriers are paying attention to the security shift, and some are starting to factor private security provisions into their underwriting. A commercial property in a high-crime ZIP code that can demonstrate active security measures, documented patrols, incident response protocols, camera coverage, may qualify for better liability and property insurance rates than an identical building with no security program.
Two Memphis insurance brokers I spoke with said they’ve seen carriers specifically ask about private security arrangements during renewals this year. One broker said a client’s premium dropped by several thousand dollars after they implemented a documented patrol program with time-stamped GPS verification.
This creates a financial incentive loop. Property managers who invest in security can potentially offset some of the cost through lower insurance premiums. The savings rarely cover the full expense of a security contract, and the process of getting carriers to recognize specific security measures in their pricing is slow and inconsistent. It’s still worth pursuing.
What’s Coming Next
The property managers I’ve talked to over the past two months don’t expect MPD’s staffing situation to improve quickly. Recruiting and training new officers takes time, and the department’s relationship with the community is still recovering from the Nichols case. The consent decree discussions between the city and the Department of Justice add another layer of uncertainty to how MPD will operate going forward.
That means private security spending in Memphis commercial real estate is likely to stay elevated. The companies that win the most business will be the ones that can demonstrate accountability through technology, maintain consistent staffing on their accounts, and price their services competitively without cutting corners on training or pay.
For property managers, the playbook is getting rewritten in real time. The old assumption that police presence would cover most of your security needs worked when MPD was at full strength and SCORPION was running aggressive patrols through commercial corridors. That world doesn’t exist anymore.
The property manager on Poplar Avenue put it plainly. “I’m budgeting 40% more for security next year than I did in 2022. My ownership group isn’t happy about it. I told them: you can pay for security or you can pay for vacancies when tenants leave because they don’t feel safe. Pick one.”
She said they picked security. Most of them are.