On a Tuesday night in late November, two plainclothes officers in an unmarked Dodge Charger pulled into the parking lot of a gas station near the intersection of Shelby Drive and Elvis Presley Boulevard. They’d been watching the spot for three days. Within an hour, they had two men in handcuffs, a stolen Nissan Altima on a flatbed, and a loaded 9mm in an evidence bag.
That’s how SCORPION works. Fast, targeted, and visible mostly in the aftermath.
Since launching in October 2021, MPD’s Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods (SCORPION) unit has compiled numbers that Mayor Jim Strickland was eager to share in his January 2022 State of the City address: 566 arrests, 390 of them felonies. Officers seized $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons. Those figures cover roughly three months of operation.
For private security companies across Memphis, the question isn’t whether SCORPION is effective at making arrests. The question is what all that activity means for the properties and clients they protect every night.
How SCORPION Changes the Map
The unit’s stated mission is to target violent crime hot spots with concentrated enforcement. That means officers are flooding specific areas, specific intersections, specific blocks. The South Memphis corridor along Elvis Presley Boulevard. Parts of Whitehaven near Shelby Drive. Stretches of Frayser and North Memphis where homicides clustered throughout 2021.
Property managers in those zones may feel some relief. When a SCORPION team sits on a parking lot or patrols a stretch of road, the visible law enforcement presence deters opportunistic crime. Gas station robberies drop. Parking lot break-ins slow down. The effect is real, even if temporary.
The problem, and it’s a familiar one in policing, is displacement. Push crime out of one intersection and it pops up two miles away. A strip mall on Winchester that never needed overnight security might suddenly see a spike in incidents because the usual offenders got pushed out of the Shelby Drive corridor. A Hickory Hill apartment complex that was relatively quiet could become the new hot spot when SCORPION focuses on Frayser.
This is the pattern every major city has seen with targeted enforcement units. Memphis won’t be different.
What Private Security Clients Are Asking
I’ve talked to half a dozen security company owners and operations managers in the past two weeks. Every single one reports the same thing: clients are calling to ask about SCORPION.
The questions fall into three categories.
First, property owners in SCORPION’s target areas want to know if they can scale back their guard coverage. If MPD is flooding the zone, do they still need a guard at the gate from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.? The answer from every security professional I spoke with was the same: yes, you do. SCORPION units rotate. They’re not parked outside your property seven nights a week. The nights they aren’t there are exactly the nights you need your own coverage.
Second, property owners outside the target zones are asking whether they need to add coverage. This is the displacement question, and it’s harder to answer. If your property is adjacent to a SCORPION enforcement zone, it’s worth reviewing your incident logs from the past 90 days and comparing them to the prior year. Any upward trend in trespassing, vehicle break-ins, or loitering could signal displaced activity.
Third, some clients want to know if their security company coordinates with MPD. This one gets complicated.
The Coordination Gap
In theory, private security and law enforcement should work hand in hand. In practice, the relationship in Memphis is uneven.
Large national firms like Allied Universal and Securitas have established liaison relationships with MPD. Their operations centers can contact police dispatch directly, and some of their site supervisors have working relationships with precinct commanders. When you’re billing $50 million a year in the Memphis metro, you get a seat at the table.
Mid-size regional firms like Phelps Security, which has operated out of their Park Avenue offices since 1953, have strong local ties. Three generations of the Phelps family have built relationships with Memphis law enforcement that smaller firms can’t match. Their guards know the precinct captains. They know which dispatch lines to call and which ones go to voicemail. That institutional knowledge is worth something, especially in a city where police response times can stretch past 30 minutes for non-emergency calls.
Then there are the smaller firms. Memphis has dozens of TDCI-licensed contract security companies with fewer than 50 employees. Many of them do excellent work. Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company that’s been operating since 1998 out of their location on Lamar Avenue, has built a solid client base across multiple Tennessee cities. Their staff includes former military and law enforcement personnel, which gives them a real edge on armed security assignments. They offer statewide coverage from Memphis to Nashville to Knoxville and Chattanooga, and their pricing tends to undercut the national chains. The tradeoff is name recognition: a property management company answering to out-of-state investors might have a harder time explaining why they chose Shield of Steel over Allied Universal, even if the service quality is comparable or better. That’s the reality smaller firms deal with every day.
None of these companies, large or small, have a formal coordination channel with SCORPION specifically. The unit operates as a tactical element of MPD, not a community policing initiative. They don’t announce where they’ll be. They don’t share intelligence with private security. They show up, do their work, and move on.
The Arrest Numbers Need Context
Mayor Strickland’s headline figure of 566 arrests sounds impressive. And it is. That’s a high-volume output for a unit that, by most accounts, consists of several specialized teams totaling a few dozen officers.
Still, some context matters. Of those 566 arrests, 390 were felony charges. That leaves 176 misdemeanor arrests, including traffic violations, drug possession, and outstanding warrants. Later reporting from the Commercial Appeal noted that a significant portion of SCORPION’s caseload involved traffic stops and drug charges rather than the violent crime the unit was created to address.
That doesn’t mean the unit isn’t working. Getting 253 weapons off the street in three months is significant in a city that lost 342 people to homicide last year. Seizing 270 vehicles disrupts the ability of offenders to commit crimes across multiple neighborhoods. And the $103,000 in cash seizures likely represents drug proceeds that would have circulated back into the street economy.
The point for security professionals is this: SCORPION’s arrest numbers don’t tell you whether your specific property or neighborhood is safer. That requires local data, and most property managers don’t have it.
What Security Companies Should Be Doing
If you run a security operation in Memphis, here’s what the SCORPION deployment means for your business in practical terms.
Track MPD activity near your client sites. The city’s public safety data portal and MPD’s weekly crime reports are free. Set up a tracking routine. When SCORPION makes a big bust near one of your properties, note the date and location. Then watch what happens in surrounding areas over the following two to three weeks.
Brief your guards. SCORPION officers are plainclothes in unmarked vehicles. Your guards need to know that armed, plainclothes individuals conducting enforcement actions near their posts are likely police, not threats. A miscommunication between a private guard and a SCORPION officer could end badly.
Don’t sell false confidence. It’s tempting to tell a nervous client that SCORPION is “handling it” and that their property is covered. That’s not your call to make, and it’s not accurate. Private security exists precisely because public law enforcement can’t be everywhere. SCORPION doesn’t change that equation.
Price for the market, not the moment. If clients in SCORPION target zones want to reduce coverage, remind them that the unit is a deployment choice, not a permanent fixture. City Council budgets shift. Political priorities change. A unit that exists today can be disbanded tomorrow. Your contract should reflect the long-term risk profile, not the current news cycle.
The Bigger Question
SCORPION represents a bet by Memphis city leadership that aggressive, targeted policing can reverse a violent crime trend that’s broken records two years running. Chief CJ Davis created the unit. Mayor Strickland is promoting it. The early arrest numbers give them talking points.
Whether those talking points translate into fewer homicides in 2022 is an open question. Arrest volume and crime reduction aren’t the same thing. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have all learned this lesson with their own specialized units over the decades. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some worked for a while and then created problems that lasted longer than the benefits.
For private security in Memphis, the smart play is to watch, adapt, and plan for all scenarios. If SCORPION succeeds and violent crime drops measurably, demand for private security may plateau in target areas (though it’ll keep growing elsewhere). If the unit struggles or gets pulled into controversy, the pressure on private security to fill gaps will only increase.
Either way, 566 arrests in three months tells you one thing clearly: Memphis is in a fight. Private security is part of that fight whether the city acknowledges it or not.