January isn’t even cold in the ground yet, and Memphis has already buried too many of its own. The city recorded 36 homicides in the first month of 2021, a pace that, if it holds, would shatter the record set just weeks ago when 2020 closed with approximately 332 murders. Do the math on that January figure. Annualized, you’re looking at over 430 killings in a city of 650,000.
Nobody expects a perfectly linear trajectory. Homicide rates fluctuate month to month, and summer typically brings the worst of it. The January numbers could ease. They could also get worse. What they cannot do, under any reasonable interpretation, is be called normal.
I’ve covered crime and security in Memphis for six years. This is different. The calls I’m getting from property managers, business owners, and apartment complex operators aren’t the typical “we need a guard on weekends” conversations. These are panicked calls. People are losing tenants. Insurance companies are raising rates. Employees are refusing to work night shifts without security on-site.
And MPD can’t help them. Not in any meaningful way. Not right now.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
Memphis Police Department entered 2021 with roughly 1,900 sworn officers. The department’s authorized strength is closer to 2,500. That gap of 500-plus officers has been widening for years, driven by retirements, resignations, low pay, and a recruiting pipeline that can’t keep up with attrition.
What does a 500-officer shortage look like on the street? It looks like longer response times. It looks like property crime calls that never get a unit dispatched. It looks like business owners calling 911 about a break-in and hearing that a car will be there “when one is available,” which sometimes means hours. Or never.
Precinct commanders are making triage decisions every shift. Violent crime gets priority. Everything else waits. A commercial burglary at a Poplar Avenue office building? Unless someone is physically in danger, it goes to the bottom of the stack. A shoplifting ring hitting retail stores along Winchester Road? MPD doesn’t have the bodies to run surveillance operations on retail theft.
This isn’t speculation. I confirmed these realities with two active MPD officers who spoke off the record, and with three separate precinct community liaisons who were more willing to talk publicly.
“We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got,” one precinct liaison told me at a January community meeting in Hickory Hill. “I wish I could tell you we’ll have a car on every corner. We won’t. If you can get private security for your business, I’d strongly recommend it.”
When a police department starts officially recommending that citizens hire private security, that tells you something about the state of public safety in Memphis.
Where the Violence Concentrates
Memphis homicides don’t happen at random. Certain corridors and neighborhoods absorb a disproportionate share of the killing. In January 2021, clusters appeared in familiar zones.
Frayser, in the northern part of the city, saw multiple shootings in the first two weeks of the year. The neighborhood has struggled with violence for decades, and vacant properties along Thomas Street and Hollywood Street create sight-line problems that make security work difficult. Two convenience stores in Frayser had armed robberies in a single week.
Whitehaven, south of the airport, recorded several homicides in January. The area around Shelby Drive and Elvis Presley Boulevard has become a hot spot for carjackings. Gas station owners along that corridor have been calling security companies in increasing numbers, though not all of them can afford the rates.
Orange Mound and South Memphis continued patterns from 2020. Gunfire in residential areas, often connected to disputes that escalate faster than anyone can intervene. The violence spills onto commercial properties: strip malls, laundromats, and fast-food restaurants where bystanders become targets.
Hickory Hill, in the southeastern part of the city, has seen a steady increase in both violent crime and property crime. What makes Hickory Hill notable for the security industry is the concentration of apartment complexes. Dozens of large complexes sit along Winchester Road and Riverdale Road, and many of them are now requiring 24/7 security as a condition of their insurance policies.
The Shelby County DA Problem
Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich’s office is drowning. Court backlogs from the pandemic have stacked cases months deep. Grand jury proceedings were delayed throughout 2020. The result is that suspects arrested for violent crimes are cycling back onto the streets faster than the system can process them.
Defense attorneys have been filing speedy trial motions, and in some cases, charges get reduced or dismissed because the state can’t meet its timeline obligations. This isn’t a political statement; it’s a math problem. The DA’s office has a finite number of prosecutors, a finite number of courtrooms, and an infinite-seeming backlog of cases.
For the security industry, the courts backlog matters because it affects deterrence. If a repeat offender knows that an arrest for trespassing or assault on a commercial property will result in a bond hearing and release within 48 hours, the arrest itself loses its deterrent value. Security companies operating in Memphis are dealing with this reality daily.
One operations manager at a mid-size Memphis security firm described it this way: “Our guards detain someone for trespassing on a client’s property. We call MPD. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t. If they come and make an arrest, the guy is back on the same property within a week. Our guards recognize him. He recognizes them. And the cycle repeats.”
Private Security Fills the Vacuum
The combination of police understaffing, court backlogs, and surging violence has created conditions where private security is no longer a luxury for Memphis businesses. It’s an operational necessity.
Commercial property owners across the metro are adding guard posts, mobile patrols, and camera monitoring at rates I haven’t seen in my years covering this beat. The Memphis market for contract security was already strong before 2020. It’s now approaching something closer to frenzied.
A few data points from conversations this month:
A national retail chain with 12 Memphis locations told me it increased its security budget for Tennessee by 40% for 2021, with most of that spending concentrated in Memphis stores. The decision came after a string of armed robberies and organized retail theft incidents at stores along Germantown Parkway and in the Wolfchase area.
An apartment complex management company operating 22 properties in Shelby County said it now requires armed security at eight of those properties, up from three in 2019. The company’s insurance carrier made armed security a condition of policy renewal at five of the sites.
A healthcare network with facilities in Midtown and East Memphis added security officers at four clinics after staff reported feeling unsafe walking to their cars after evening shifts. This particular decision had nothing to do with patient-facing incidents; it was entirely about employee retention. Nurses and medical assistants threatened to quit if the parking lots weren’t patrolled.
The Staffing Catch-22
Here’s the cruel irony of the Memphis security market in early 2021: demand has never been higher, and supply has rarely been thinner.
Security companies in Memphis are competing for the same labor pool as Amazon, FedEx, and the dozens of logistics operations that ring the city. Amazon’s Memphis-area facilities start workers at $15 an hour or more. FedEx, the city’s largest employer, offers competitive wages plus benefits. Security companies, many of them paying $10 to $12 an hour for unarmed positions, can’t match those numbers.
The wage gap creates a vicious cycle. Companies can’t raise guard pay without raising contract prices. Clients resist price increases even as they demand more coverage. Guards leave for better-paying warehouse jobs. The company loses the contract because it can’t staff it. Revenue drops, making it even harder to raise wages.
Some firms are finding ways to break the cycle. A few have raised starting wages to $13 or $14 an hour and passed the cost directly to clients, who grudgingly accepted because the alternative was no security at all. Others have focused on armed guard contracts, which command higher billing rates and allow for better pay.
Training is another bottleneck. Tennessee requires security guards to complete state-mandated training and register with TDCI. For armed guards, the requirements include firearms qualification. None of these requirements are unreasonable, yet in a labor market where someone can get hired at a distribution center with no training and start earning immediately, every additional hoop pushes candidates away.
What Property Managers Should Do Right Now
If you manage commercial property in Memphis and you don’t have a security plan, you’re behind. Here’s what I’d recommend based on what I’m seeing across the market:
Start with a threat assessment. Not the kind where a consultant charges you $10,000 for a binder nobody reads. A practical walk-through of your property with your insurance agent and a local security professional. Identify the vulnerabilities: poor lighting, blind spots, unsecured entry points, inadequate cameras.
Lock in a security contract now, not in March or April. Guard availability will only get tighter as spring approaches and commercial activity increases. Companies that wait until summer to shop for security will find themselves at the back of the line.
Consider technology as a force multiplier. Camera systems with remote monitoring can cover areas where you can’t afford to post a guard full-time. License plate readers at entry points deter repeat offenders. Access control systems reduce the surface area that guards need to patrol.
Talk to your tenants. If you manage multi-tenant properties, your tenants are already thinking about security whether you bring it up or not. Getting ahead of the conversation lets you incorporate security costs into common area maintenance fees rather than eating them as a one-off expense.
And talk to MPD, even if the conversation is frustrating. Precinct commanders still want to know about crime on commercial properties. Reporting incidents, even when a unit can’t respond immediately, builds the data that drives patrol allocation decisions. If your property isn’t in the system, it doesn’t exist in the department’s crime maps.
A City on Edge
Memphis has been here before. The city has struggled with violent crime for decades, and there have been previous spikes that generated the same alarm we’re feeling now. What’s different this time is the convergence of factors: pandemic disruption, police staffing at historic lows, court system backlogs, economic inequality, and a firearms market that has flooded the streets with guns.
January’s numbers may not hold for the rest of the year. I hope they don’t. What they tell us right now, in early February 2021, is that Memphis businesses can’t wait for the city to fix its public safety crisis. The crisis is here. Private security isn’t the whole answer, and it’s not a substitute for a fully staffed and well-funded police department. It is, for many Memphis businesses right now, the only answer available.