This public-source analysis was prepared from agency pages checked October 15, 2026. Memphis Security Insider is independent and unaffiliated with the Memphis Police Department, the City of Memphis, the FBI or Connect Memphis. It offers operational guidance, not a finding about any property or security provider.
Twenty-seven percent is a citywide number. Your loading dock has its own.
On October 8, the Memphis Police Department said Part 1 crime in the third quarter of 2026 fell 27% from the same quarter last year. The department’s third-quarter release covers July 1 through September 30. It also reports an 88% homicide clearance rate through the quarter and 746 drone flights during the three-month period.
MPD’s figures deserve attention. They do not answer whether the rear gate at a Cordova apartment property fails twice a week, whether an East Memphis office garage has a repeat theft pattern or whether a Whitehaven retail site’s camera clock is eleven minutes wrong.
This week’s work is direct: take the public number seriously, then compare it with records from the place you are paid to protect.
Start with what MPD actually published
The headline figure is a comparison between two equal calendar periods. MPD says overall Part 1 crime was 27% lower in July through September 2026 than in July through September 2025.
As published, the release does not provide the two underlying offense totals. It does not break the 27% figure into offense categories or police precincts. It also does not attach a downloadable table showing when the data was extracted. Missing fields do not disprove the reported decline. They limit what a reader can calculate from this page alone.
The FBI’s UCR offense definitions say Part I data measure the level and scope of crime reported to law enforcement. The program’s founders selected offenses that were serious, occurred regularly across the country and were likely to be reported. The FBI’s trend methodology defines a crime trend as the percentage change in reported crime from a prior equivalent period and says common reported months matter when agencies are compared.
Federal definitions explain the terms. They do not validate MPD’s unpublished calculation or establish which local categories the department included in the 27% figure. The release presents an overall citywide Part 1 comparison without the underlying table.
The citywide figure is not a 27% fall at every address, during every shift or in every offense category. It does not tell readers about calls that never became offense reports. It does not count a broken light, a propped door, a missed patrol or a camera that failed to export when an investigator asked for video.
Property operations live in those gaps.
The 88% clearance figure answers a different question
MPD says its Homicide Bureau reached an 88% homicide clearance rate through the third quarter, compared with 57% at the end of September 2025. That is the department’s reported measure. The release attributes the increase to investigative resources and stronger case work, though it does not publish the underlying homicide and clearance counts on the page.
“Cleared” has a specific crime-reporting meaning. The FBI says an offense may be cleared by arrest or by exceptional means. The measure counts offenses cleared, not people arrested, and a clearance recorded in one year may concern an offense from an earlier year.
MPD’s release does not say whether its 88% was calculated under that federal method. Keep the figure attributed to the department rather than presenting it as an independently verified UCR rate.
So 88% does not mean 88% of third-quarter homicide cases produced a conviction. It also should not be combined with the 27% Part 1 decline as though both percentages share a denominator. One concerns reported offense volume across a group of crimes. The other is MPD’s reported share of homicide offenses cleared.
Keep the labels attached. A board memo that says “crime down 27%, homicide cases solved at 88%” has already stripped away too much information.
Give the city dashboard a job it can do
The city’s Safer Community tool can help frame a narrower question, though its public guide does not document a simple Q3-to-Q3 reproduction of MPD’s headline number.
The Safer Community user guide, created and last updated November 7, 2025, says the dashboard begins with January 1, 2023 data and updates daily with the prior day’s data. It documents filters for year, crime category, Part One or Two designation, precinct and ward. It also says a current-year selection calculates metrics from January 1 through yesterday, while a prior-year selection shows the complete calendar year.
Those rules matter on October 15, 2026. A current-year dashboard figure may cover January through October 14, not MPD’s July 1 through September 30 quarter. Use the tool to frame a category or area question. Do not treat one filtered result as a validation of the 27% release.
For a managed property, record the displayed period, the precinct, ward or other location filter, the selected categories and the date the search was run. Save those settings with the review. Then compare the result with records you control:
| Record | Question it can answer | Question it cannot answer alone |
|---|---|---|
| Police dashboard result | What the public tool displayed for chosen filters | Whether every event at the property was reported or correctly located |
| Guard activity report | What a guard recorded during a shift | Whether the event became a police report or later court case |
| Access-control log | Which credential or device event the system recorded | Who physically used a credential without other evidence |
| Camera export log | Whether selected footage was exported and by whom | Whether the camera covered the needed view before export |
| Maintenance ticket | Whether a repair was requested and marked complete | Whether the control still worked on a later night shift |
Now the 27% figure has context. It is the city comparison beside a property record, not a discount applied to the security budget.
Build a Q3 property baseline before changing coverage
Pull the July 1 through September 30 records for each site. Keep 2025 and 2026 separate. Compare the same property footprint and the same event definitions.
Definition drift catches more errors than people expect. One vendor may label a sleeping person near an entrance as “trespass” while another uses “welfare check.” A maintenance team may log a forced door as hardware damage, while a guard calls it an attempted break-in. Neither label should silently become a police offense.
Use a simple reconciliation sheet with five fields:
- Source and source time. Name the system, report or person. Preserve the original time zone and note a known clock offset.
- Observed condition. Write what the source shows. Leave motive and identity blank unless another source establishes them.
- Operational effect. Record a closed entrance, delayed opening, employee escort, lost asset or other verified effect.
- Action and owner. Name the repair, post-order change, footage export or management decision, plus the person responsible.
- Retest date. State when someone checked whether the control worked and whether the condition recurred.
Short entries. Hard edges.
Do not force a percentage when the exposure changed. A half-empty office building in 2025 and a fully leased one in 2026 did not present the same number of people, vehicles or deliveries. Put occupancy, operating hours or another relevant exposure measure beside the incident count. Explain the measure. Never manufacture a city-style crime rate from thin property data.
Check the whole evidence path
MPD reports 746 drone flights during Q3 and says the flights helped assess calls, locate people and give information to responding officers. That is an agency account of program activity. The release does not say 746 crimes were prevented or solved.
A private camera program needs the same discipline. Count what the system did, then check whether it produced usable evidence when needed.
We examined the boundary between police drones and property cameras in our August operations guide. The Connect Memphis privacy FAQ draws the key distinction for this Q3 review: registering a camera lets authorized MPD users see its location and request footage, while registration alone does not provide a live stream. The site describes live access as a separate, permission-based option using additional equipment.
If a property participates, write down its actual status: unregistered, registered for contact, or integrated under a defined access arrangement. Confirm that the contact name is current. Test an export from each priority view. Check whether the timestamp, file format and retention process match the incident plan. A camera icon on a site plan proves very little.
When a public record is needed, ask for the record that answers the question. MPD’s Central Records page says incident and offense reports are available through that office and separately lists crime analysis services. Availability, current fees and release conditions should be confirmed with the office. A news release, dashboard result, incident report and dispatch chronology are different records.
Set the Q4 decision rule in writing
A lower citywide count can support a calmer review. It cannot carry the decision by itself.
Before adding, moving or removing coverage, write four lines:
- the verified property condition;
- the proposed change;
- the result the change is meant to produce; and
- the date and evidence for review.
“Crime is down” is not a verified property condition. “The west vehicle gate recorded six forced-open alerts during staffed hours in September, four with no guard exception entry” is one, assuming the records support it.
The same rule applies when conditions improve. If a repaired gate, changed delivery route and revised closing procedure are followed by a sustained drop in verified incidents, management can consider adjusting coverage. Record what evidence justified the adjustment and what would trigger another review. Do not reward staff for fewer calls on paper, and do not delay emergency reporting to protect a metric.
MPD’s October 8 release is encouraging. It also reports 246 arrests, including 208 felony arrests, and 60 recovered firearms during Operation Pressure Point. Those are enforcement outputs reported by the department. The page does not establish how much any one tactic caused the citywide decline.
Property managers do not need to solve that causal question before Monday morning. They need to know whether the lock works, whether the post order matches the site, whether the incident log can survive scrutiny and whether a verified repeat condition has an owner.
Twenty-seven percent belongs in the briefing. The property record decides the shift.