School lets out in Shelby County next week. Temperatures are already hitting the upper 80s. And if history tells us anything, Memphis is about to enter its most dangerous stretch of the year.
The city recorded 346 homicides in 2021, breaking the previous record of 332 set in 2020. Through late May 2022, the numbers are tracking slightly lower than last year’s pace, yet we’re still on course for 300 or more by December. Memphis Police Department leadership has acknowledged as much in recent briefings.
None of this should surprise anyone who’s been paying attention. What should concern business owners and property managers is the seasonal pattern underneath those annual totals. Violent crime in Memphis doesn’t distribute evenly across the calendar. It clusters, and it clusters hard in the summer months.
The Seasonal Pattern
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data has shown the same trend for decades, nationally and locally: violent crime peaks between June and August. Memphis follows this pattern with particular intensity.
The reasons aren’t mysterious. More people spend time outside. Longer daylight hours mean more foot traffic in commercial areas. Disputes that might stay indoors during January spill onto parking lots and sidewalks when the weather’s warm. School dismissal puts thousands of teenagers onto city streets with unstructured time. Alcohol consumption rises. Tempers run shorter.
Property crime follows a similar curve. Auto burglaries spike when people leave windows cracked in hot parking lots. Residential break-ins increase because more homes sit empty during summer vacations. Retail theft picks up as foot traffic grows.
For Memphis specifically, the summer months in 2021 were devastating. July and August each saw over 30 homicides. Aggravated assaults followed the same upward trajectory. Carjackings, which had already been surging since 2020, showed no sign of slowing.
Where the Problems Concentrate
Memphis crime isn’t random. It concentrates in identifiable corridors and intersections. Businesses and property managers need to think geographically.
The Whitehaven area along Elvis Presley Boulevard continues to see elevated violent crime, particularly around the intersection with Shelby Drive. Commercial properties in that corridor dealt with multiple armed robberies and carjackings in early 2022.
The Hickory Hill neighborhood, centered around Winchester Road east of Hacks Cross, has been one of the city’s most active areas for property crime. The strip malls and retail centers along Winchester are frequent targets.
North Memphis, particularly along Thomas Street and Chelsea Avenue, remains one of the highest-crime zones in the city. Businesses operating near the intersection of Chelsea and Watkins have dealt with persistent issues.
Orange Mound, one of Memphis’s oldest neighborhoods, sees crime concentrate along Park Avenue and Lamar Avenue. The Lamar corridor from Airways south toward the Shelby County line has been a particular trouble spot for auto-related crimes.
Frayser, along North Watkins and Overton Crossing, rounds out the high-activity areas. Gas stations and convenience stores in Frayser have been hit repeatedly.
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Crime happens everywhere in Memphis. I’ve covered shootings in Collierville and robberies in Bartlett. Yet resource allocation matters, and the neighborhoods above are where MPD concentrates its efforts for good reason.
MPD’s Staffing Reality
Here’s the part that should worry everyone: the Memphis Police Department doesn’t have enough officers to handle what’s coming.
MPD’s authorized strength is somewhere around 2,300 sworn officers. The department currently has fewer than 2,000. Some estimates put the number closer to 1,950. That gap, roughly 350 officers short of full strength, represents the equivalent of several patrol precincts worth of manpower.
Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, who took over in June 2021, has made recruiting a priority. The department has pushed hiring bonuses, relaxed some entry requirements, and accelerated academy timelines. These efforts have helped slow the bleeding, yet the department is still losing officers to retirement, resignation, and lateral transfers to suburban departments that pay better.
The SCORPION unit (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods), launched under Davis’s leadership, is still actively patrolling identified hot spots. The specialized unit focuses on violent crime suppression through targeted patrols and warrant service. SCORPION teams operate in the corridors I mentioned above, along with other areas identified through CompStat data.
Whether SCORPION’s saturation approach produces sustained crime reduction or just pushes activity into neighboring areas is an open question. The unit has generated arrests and weapon seizures. It’s also generated complaints about aggressive tactics.
Regardless of where you stand on policing strategy, the math is straightforward: fewer officers means slower response times, less proactive patrol, and less visible deterrence. For businesses that rely on police presence as part of their security posture, that’s a problem.
What Businesses Should Do Now
If you manage commercial property in Memphis, the next 90 days require attention. Here’s what I’d recommend based on conversations with security operators, property managers, and law enforcement contacts across the city.
Audit your lighting. This sounds basic because it is basic. Walk your parking lots and building perimeters after dark. Every burned-out fixture, every shadowed corner, every gap in coverage is an invitation. Memphis summers mean people are out until 9 p.m. and later. Your exterior lighting needs to match those extended hours. Pay special attention to dumpster enclosures, loading docks, and stairwells.
Review camera systems. If your CCTV hasn’t been serviced since last summer, get it checked now. Verify that cameras are actually recording, that storage capacity is adequate, and that image quality is good enough for MPD to use if they need the footage. A camera that produces blurry, unusable video at night is worse than no camera at all because it creates a false sense of security.
Talk to your security provider. If you’re using contract security, have a direct conversation with your account manager about summer staffing. Guard companies across Memphis are struggling to hire and retain people right now. The labor market is brutal. If your provider is going to have trouble filling your shifts, you want to know that in May rather than discovering it in July when a post goes unmanned for a weekend.
Revisit access control. Summer brings more visitors, more deliveries, more foot traffic from adjacent properties. If your building or campus uses access cards or key fobs, run a deactivation audit. How many former employees or expired vendors still have active credentials? How many cards have been reported lost and never deactivated? These are the gaps that get exploited.
Coordinate with neighboring businesses. Crime doesn’t respect property lines. If the strip mall next to your office park gets hit repeatedly, you’re going to feel the effects. Talk to your neighbors about shared concerns. Consider a joint approach to private patrol services. Several Memphis business districts have formed informal security cooperatives where multiple property owners split the cost of a dedicated patrol vehicle during peak hours.
Have a plan for your parking areas. Carjackings in Memphis have been a serious problem since 2020. Employees and customers are most vulnerable in parking lots, particularly during early morning arrivals and evening departures. If your lot lacks security presence during shift changes, consider posting a guard during those transition windows rather than overnight when the property is empty.
Think about juveniles. This is uncomfortable to discuss, yet it’s reality. When school lets out, juvenile crime rises. Groups of young people congregating around commercial properties can lead to shoplifting, vandalism, and occasionally violent incidents. Retail operators in Hickory Hill, Raleigh, and Whitehaven can tell you stories. The answer isn’t hostile architecture or chasing kids off. It’s visible, consistent security presence that sets clear boundaries without escalation.
Private Security Can’t Replace Police
I want to be direct about this. Private security companies are filling gaps that MPD’s staffing shortage has created. Property managers who five years ago would have called 911 and waited for a patrol car are now paying for armed guards because they can’t afford the response time gamble.
That’s not how the system is supposed to work. Private security is an access control and deterrence tool. It’s not a substitute for sworn law enforcement with arrest authority, investigative resources, and legal backing. When we normalize the idea that businesses should privately fund their own protection because the police department can’t cover the territory, we’re papering over a structural problem.
The Memphis City Council approved MPD’s budget for the current fiscal year with recruiting incentives included. Whether those incentives bring officers in fast enough to make a difference by August is doubtful. Training academy cycles take months. The officers hitting the street this summer were recruited last fall.
So here’s the reality for summer 2022: MPD will be stretched thin. The SCORPION unit will focus on the hottest corridors. Suburban precincts will handle their own growing caseloads. And businesses in high-crime areas will need to take their security more seriously than they did last year, because the cavalry isn’t coming quickly enough.
Plan accordingly. Budget for it. Don’t wait until there’s a crime scene in your parking lot to start thinking about what you should have done in May.