The dogwoods are blooming along Poplar Avenue and temperatures finally cracked 70 degrees last week. For most Memphians, that means barbecue season. For private security companies across Shelby County, it means something else entirely.
Every year, like clockwork, crime ticks upward when the weather warms. MPD Director Michael Rallings said as much at a community meeting in Frayser last month, telling residents that his department was “preparing for what we know is coming.” The pattern isn’t unique to Memphis. Criminologists have studied the link between temperature and crime for decades. What is unique to Memphis is the scale of the problem and the growing role private security firms play in filling gaps that a stretched-thin police department can’t cover.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Memphis closed out 2018 with more than 15,500 aggravated assaults reported to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. Property crime numbers were similarly grim. And every spring, the weekly incident counts climb as days get longer and more people spend time outside.
Carjackings have been a particular sore spot. The intersection of Hickory Hill Road and Winchester saw three carjackings in a single week back in February, and that was still cold weather. Security managers at the shopping centers along that corridor are already adding evening patrol hours in anticipation of worse months ahead.
“We start getting calls in February,” said one operations manager at a mid-size Memphis security firm who asked not to be named because his company doesn’t authorize media interviews. “Property managers, HOAs, strip mall owners. They all know what’s coming. By March we’re scrambling to fill shifts.”
Where the Trouble Concentrates
Not every Memphis neighborhood sees the same spike. The pattern is predictable, and security companies have learned to watch the same areas MPD watches.
Frayser consistently ranks among the highest-crime neighborhoods in the city. The stretch of Thomas Street between James Road and Whitney Avenue has been a trouble spot for years. Convenience stores along Frayser Boulevard have increasingly turned to private security after a string of armed robberies in late 2018 that left store owners feeling abandoned by a police force that sometimes takes 45 minutes to respond to non-emergency calls.
Whitehaven, once a solidly middle-class neighborhood south of the airport, has seen its share of problems too. Elvis Presley Boulevard between Shelby Drive and Brooks Road draws tourists to Graceland, and that tourist traffic brings its own set of security concerns. Car break-ins in the Graceland parking areas are common enough that private security firms have standing contracts with several businesses along the boulevard.
Then there’s Hickory Hill. What was Memphis’s fastest-growing suburb in the 1990s has become one of its most crime-troubled areas. The apartment complexes along Knight Arnold Road and Ridgeway Road have some of the highest call volumes in the city. Several property management companies have hired round-the-clock security teams, a cost they pass along to tenants through higher rents.
Private Security Fills the Gap
Memphis has roughly 2,000 sworn police officers for a city of 650,000. That ratio has been a problem for years, and Director Rallings has been vocal about needing more recruits. The MPD academy has struggled with retention — recruits who make it through training sometimes leave for better-paying departments in Collierville, Germantown, or Bartlett before their first year is up.
Private security companies have stepped into that vacuum. Tennessee’s private security industry has grown steadily over the past decade, and Memphis is the state’s biggest market. The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees guard licensing through its Private Protective Services board, reported a 12 percent increase in active guard registrations statewide between 2016 and 2018.
In practical terms, that means more guards walking the parking lots at Oak Court Mall, more patrol cars circling apartment complexes in Cordova, and more armed officers standing post at convenience stores from Raleigh to Southaven.
The work isn’t glamorous. Most private security in Memphis is overnight shift work. Eight to twelve hours watching a construction site or walking the perimeter of a warehouse off Lamar Avenue. The pay ranges from $10 to $15 an hour for unarmed guards, with armed guards pulling $13 to $20 depending on the company and the contract.
Staffing Challenges
The spring crime uptick creates a staffing crunch that security companies dread. Demand for guards spikes right when the labor market tightens. Memphis’s unemployment rate sat at 4.3 percent in February, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier. That’s good news for workers and bad news for security firms trying to fill overnight posts at $11 an hour.
“You’re competing with Amazon, FedEx, every warehouse in the city,” said a recruiter for a national security company’s Memphis office. “We need people who can pass a background check and show up sober at midnight. That pool isn’t as big as you’d think.”
The staffing problem has pushed some companies to get creative. Sign-on bonuses of $200 to $500 have become common. A few firms offer gas cards or transit passes. Others have raised starting wages, though margins in the security business are thin enough that a dollar-an-hour increase can eat into profits fast.
Training requirements add another layer of difficulty. Tennessee requires all security guards to register with the state, and armed guards need 16 hours of classroom and range training before they can carry a firearm on duty. That training costs money, typically $150 to $300, and takes time that new hires would rather spend earning a paycheck.
What Property Managers Are Doing
Smart property managers in Memphis don’t wait for the crime spike to hit. They’re already adjusting their security plans for the warmer months.
At a retail center on Summer Avenue near Highland, the management company doubled its weekend security hours starting March 1. Two guards now work Friday and Saturday nights from 6 PM to 6 AM, up from one guard on a shorter shift during winter months.
Several apartment complexes in the Raines Road area have installed new camera systems over the winter and are pairing them with mobile patrol services. The idea is that cameras catch what guards miss, and guards respond faster than police.
One property manager who oversees a portfolio of commercial buildings in Midtown told me his security budget for 2019 is up 15 percent over last year. “It’s the cost of doing business in Memphis,” he said. “You either spend it on security or you spend it on broken windows, stolen copper, and lost tenants. Security is cheaper.”
The Carjacking Problem
Carjackings deserve their own mention because they’ve become such a defining crime in Memphis. The city recorded more than 500 carjackings in 2018, and the first quarter of 2019 isn’t showing any improvement.
The typical profile is depressingly familiar. A driver pulls into a gas station or parking lot, usually after dark. One or two suspects approach, sometimes armed, sometimes just aggressive. The driver hands over keys and a phone. The car turns up days later, stripped or wrecked, in a neighborhood miles from where it was taken.
Gas stations along Airways Boulevard, Lamar Avenue, and Elvis Presley Boulevard have been frequent targets. Several have hired armed guards to stand outside during evening hours, a visual deterrent that station owners say has reduced incidents at their specific locations, though critics argue it just pushes the problem down the road to the next unguarded lot.
Private security can’t solve the carjacking epidemic. That’s a policing and prosecutorial problem. What security companies can do is harden specific locations, making them less attractive targets. Bright lighting, visible cameras, and a uniformed presence all help. None of them fix the root causes.
Looking at the Rest of 2019
Director Rallings has promised increased patrols in high-crime areas through the summer months. The Real Time Crime Center, MPD’s surveillance hub downtown, has expanded its camera network and added staff. Community organizations in Frayser, Whitehaven, and Orange Mound are planning summer programs aimed at keeping young people occupied and off the streets.
Private security companies will do what they always do — hire as fast as they can, deploy guards where the contracts are, and try to hold the line until fall when things cool down, literally and figuratively.
The honest truth is that Memphis has more crime than its police force can handle alone. That gap isn’t closing anytime soon. As long as it exists, private security will keep growing, staffing up every spring and hanging on through another hot Memphis summer.
For property managers, business owners, and residents thinking about security, the advice from every company I talked to was the same. Don’t wait until something happens. The time to upgrade your security plan is now, before the summer heat and the trouble that comes with it.
I’ll be tracking crime numbers through the summer and checking back with the security companies I spoke with for this piece. If the pattern holds, and every indication says it will — the next few months will test Memphis’s security infrastructure harder than any winter ever does.