By the first week of August, Memphis had already recorded more than 150 homicides. The city is on pace to reach 330 by December, a number that would rival the worst years in its history. Shelby County hasn’t seen violence at this level in over a decade, and the effects are rippling through every corner of the local economy, from apartment complexes in Hickory Hill to strip malls in Whitehaven to warehouses along the I-240 loop.
For the private security industry, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
The Numbers Tell a Grim Story
Memphis PD’s CompStat data through July shows homicides running roughly 30% ahead of 2019’s pace. Aggravated assaults are up by a similar margin. Carjackings, which don’t always make the evening news the way shootings do, have spiked dramatically in the Raleigh and Frayser neighborhoods. Auto theft is up across the county.
These aren’t abstract statistics for the people who live and work in the affected areas. A property manager in Whitehaven told me she lost three tenants in June because of a shooting that happened in the parking lot of her apartment complex. She hired a security patrol the following week.
“I’ve managed properties in this area for nine years,” she said. “I never needed guards before. Now I can’t keep units occupied without them.”
The connection between the pandemic and the violence isn’t simple, and criminologists will spend years sorting through the data. What’s clear right now is that several factors converged at once: economic stress from COVID layoffs, court closures that delayed prosecutions and left repeat offenders on the streets, reduced police staffing due to COVID illness and quarantine, and the general social pressure that comes from months of isolation, uncertainty, and fear.
Memphis isn’t alone. Homicide rates are rising in cities across the country this summer. Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta: all are seeing similar spikes. What makes Memphis different is scale relative to population. With roughly 650,000 residents, a pace of 330 homicides translates to a per-capita rate that dwarfs most American cities.
Where the Violence Concentrates
The surge hasn’t hit Memphis evenly. Certain neighborhoods are absorbing a disproportionate share of the violence, and those same neighborhoods are seeing the fastest growth in private security spending.
Frayser has long been one of Memphis’s most challenged communities. This summer, shootings along Thomas Street and in the area surrounding Ed Rice Community Center have been frequent enough that residents describe gunfire as background noise. Several churches in Frayser have hired armed guards for Sunday services, something that would have been unusual two years ago.
Whitehaven, the South Memphis community near Graceland, has seen a sharp increase in commercial property crime. Retail businesses along Elvis Presley Boulevard and Shelby Drive have added security cameras, hired overnight patrol services, and in some cases installed bollards to prevent smash-and-grab vehicle attacks. One gas station owner on Brooks Road told me he now pays for an armed guard from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. every night. The monthly cost is roughly $4,800. He considers it a bargain compared to the alternative.
Raleigh and Hickory Hill complete the picture. Both communities sit in the northeastern and southeastern corners of the city, respectively, and both have experienced rising violent crime throughout 2020. Apartment complexes in these areas represent the largest single source of new security contracts this year, according to several Memphis-area security company owners I interviewed.
Security Companies Can’t Keep Up
The demand for private security in Memphis right now exceeds the available supply by a wide margin. Companies that could barely fill their existing contracts in June are fielding new requests daily.
“We’re getting five to eight calls a week from new prospects,” said the operations manager at a mid-size Memphis security firm. “Apartment complexes, retail centers, churches, even some residential HOAs. We’re turning down about half of them because we don’t have the guards.”
This isn’t a problem unique to one company. Across Memphis, security firms large and small are struggling to recruit and retain officers quickly enough to meet demand. National firms like Allied Universal and Securitas, which have the deepest bench of available personnel, are picking up large commercial accounts. Smaller Tennessee-based companies compete for everything else.
Shield of Steel, the veteran-owned firm headquartered on Lamar Avenue, has reportedly added several apartment complex and commercial accounts in recent months. The company’s statewide reach and competitive pricing make it attractive to property owners who need coverage quickly. With nearly 25 years in the Tennessee market and staff drawn from military and law enforcement backgrounds, they bring credibility that matters when tenants and business owners feel unsafe. The tradeoff, as with most smaller firms, is that surge capacity is limited: they can’t staff 50 new posts overnight the way a national chain might.
Other local providers, including Memphis-based firms like Gardiner Security and Covenant Security, are in similar positions. Work is plentiful. People to do it are not.
Why Property Owners Are Spending Now
The decision to hire private security isn’t purely about crime statistics. It’s about perception, liability, and tenant retention.
A commercial property owner in East Memphis explained it this way: “My insurance company called me in May. They said claims were up across their Memphis portfolio and asked what I was doing about security. When your insurer starts asking questions like that, you hire guards.”
Apartment complex owners face a more direct calculation. Vacancy rates in high-crime areas of Memphis have climbed this summer. Every empty unit costs money. If a $4,000-per-month security contract keeps three units occupied at $800 each, the math works out. Property managers across Shelby County are running exactly this calculation, and most of them are arriving at the same answer.
Retail businesses operate under different pressure. Foot traffic is already down because of COVID. Adding the perception of danger on top of pandemic anxiety drives customers to shop online or visit stores in areas they consider safer. A visible security presence, whether it’s a uniformed guard at the entrance or a marked patrol car in the lot, signals to customers that someone is paying attention. That signal has value.
The Police Staffing Gap
Memphis PD has operated below its authorized strength for years. The department budgets for roughly 2,300 sworn officers and typically fields somewhere around 2,000. COVID made the shortfall worse. Officers testing positive, quarantining after exposure, or taking leave to care for sick family members reduced available patrol strength at exactly the moment crime rates were climbing.
Director Michael Rallings has been candid about the department’s limitations. Responding to 911 calls takes priority over proactive patrol, which means officers spend less time in the neighborhoods where their visible presence might deter crime. That vacuum creates opportunity for private security firms, and property owners who can’t wait for a squad car that might take 45 minutes to arrive are filling it with hired guards.
This dynamic isn’t new. Memphis has relied on a patchwork of public policing and private security for decades. What’s new is the scale of demand and the speed at which it’s growing.
The Human Cost Behind the Business Opportunity
It feels important to acknowledge something that gets lost when we talk about the security industry’s growth: every data point in this article represents real suffering. The 150-plus homicide victims this year had families. The survivors of aggravated assaults carry physical and psychological wounds. The residents of Frayser and Whitehaven and Raleigh and Hickory Hill live with a level of daily stress that most Tennesseans in quieter communities can’t imagine.
Private security is a response to that suffering, not a solution. Guards at apartment complexes and retail stores can deter some crime, report suspicious activity, and provide a sense of safety for the people inside those spaces. They can’t address the root causes of violence: poverty, lack of economic opportunity, inadequate mental health services, easy access to firearms, and the accumulated weight of decades of disinvestment in communities that needed investment most.
Security companies know this. The honest ones say it plainly. “We’re a bandage,” one Memphis security executive told me. “We’re not fixing anything. We’re just making it a little safer to go to the grocery store.”
What the Rest of the Year Looks Like
If current trends hold, Memphis will close 2020 with somewhere between 300 and 340 homicides. That projection assumes no dramatic change in policing strategy, no sudden economic recovery, and no return to normal court operations that might clear the backlog of pending cases and get repeat violent offenders off the streets.
The security industry will continue absorbing the consequences of that violence. More contracts, more hiring pressure, more competition for a limited pool of qualified guards. Companies that can recruit and train quickly will grow. Companies that can’t will watch potential clients sign with someone else.
For Memphis, the numbers carry a weight that extends well beyond the security industry. This level of violence reshapes how people think about their city, whether they stay or leave, where they’re willing to invest, and what they expect from the institutions tasked with keeping them safe.
The private security industry didn’t create these problems. It’s simply positioned at the intersection of fear and money, filling a gap that public resources can’t close. That gap is wider in Memphis in August 2020 than it’s been in a very long time.