On January 7, 2023, five Memphis police officers beat Tyre Nichols during a traffic stop. He died three days later. Everything that happened in Tennessee’s security industry for the rest of the year traces back, in one way or another, to those twelve minutes on Castlegate Lane.
That’s not an exaggeration. The SCORPION unit was disbanded by January 28. The DOJ launched a pattern-and-practice investigation by July. MPD officers across the department pulled back from proactive policing. Businesses that had depended on police patrols discovered they couldn’t anymore. Private security demand hit levels the industry had never seen. And the guard shortage that was already a problem before January became the single biggest constraint on an industry trying to grow into record demand.
2023 was the year Tennessee’s private security market matured under crisis pressure. What follows is what actually happened, what it means, and what 2024 will probably look like.
The Nichols Effect: A Year Later
The immediate aftermath of Nichols’ death played out in ways that were predictable and ways that weren’t.
The predictable part: public outrage, criminal charges against the five officers, national media coverage, and political pressure that led to the DOJ investigation. All of that followed the pattern established in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Minneapolis.
The less predictable part was the speed and depth of the de-policing effect in Memphis. Officers didn’t just stop the aggressive street enforcement that SCORPION had specialized in. Many pulled back from routine proactive work: fewer traffic stops, fewer pedestrian contacts, fewer patrols through high-crime commercial corridors. The data from MPD’s own reports shows declines in all categories of officer-initiated activity through the spring and summer.
By mid-year, the effect had created a visible gap in security coverage across Shelby County. Commercial property owners, particularly in Southeast Memphis and along the Whitehaven corridor, reported that routine police presence essentially disappeared. The officers still responded to 911 calls. The drive-throughs, the check-ins, the visible deterrence that comes from a patrol car rolling through a parking lot at 10 p.m., all of that dropped off.
That gap is what drove the private security boom. Not marketing. Not industry salesmanship. A genuine need that the public safety system stopped meeting.
Memphis: Murders Down, Anxiety Up
Memphis recorded over 300 homicides in 2023. That’s down from the record of 350-plus set in 2022. The reduction is real and worth acknowledging. It’s also not as reassuring as the headline number suggests.
Three hundred murders in a city of 630,000 people is a rate that still ranks among the highest in the nation. The slight decline from 2022 may reflect the natural regression from a historic peak more than any fundamental change in the conditions that produce violence.
Aggravated assaults, robberies, and auto thefts remained high throughout the year. Carjackings, which drove a significant portion of the public’s fear in 2022, continued at elevated rates through the summer before tapering slightly in the fall. The type of crime that most directly affects commercial property, burglary and theft, showed modest improvement in some precincts and none in others.
The disconnect between the statistical picture and the public’s feeling of safety remained wide all year. People don’t experience crime as a citywide data set. They experience it as the break-in at the store next door, the carjacking at the gas station they use, the gunshots they hear from their back porch. By those measures, Memphis in 2023 still felt dangerous.
The Covenant School Shooting and Middle Tennessee
On March 27, a shooter killed three children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville. The tragedy sent a shockwave through Middle Tennessee that had lasting effects on school security spending throughout the region.
Nashville-area private schools increased their security budgets dramatically in the second half of 2023. Some hired full-time armed officers for the first time. Others contracted with security firms to provide entry screening and campus patrol during school hours. Public school districts in Davidson, Williamson, and Rutherford counties accelerated plans for security upgrades that had been in various stages of discussion.
The school security market in Tennessee, which had been a niche within the broader industry, grew by an estimated 30 to 40 percent in spending terms during 2023. That growth was concentrated in Middle Tennessee and driven almost entirely by the Covenant shooting. Memphis and East Tennessee saw more modest school security increases.
The emotional weight of the shooting influenced security decisions well beyond schools. Churches, community centers, and other soft-target venues across Nashville upgraded their security postures. Some installed access control systems. Others hired guards for Sunday services and community events. The Covenant shooting didn’t just change school security. It changed the threshold at which organizations decided they needed professional protection.
Nashville: The Fastest-Growing Market
Nashville’s security market grew faster in percentage terms than any other major Tennessee market in 2023. The growth had three drivers.
First, the construction pipeline. Nashville added significant commercial square footage in 2023, including office towers, hotels, mixed-use developments, and residential high-rises. Every new building needs security. Most Nashville developers now include private security in their operating budgets from the project planning stage, treating it as essential infrastructure rather than an optional expense.
Second, the tourism economy kept expanding. Lower Broadway’s foot traffic continued to climb. New entertainment venues opened. Hotel occupancy rates stayed high. All of it generated security contracts.
Third, the Covenant shooting pushed security spending into sectors that had previously underinvested, particularly private education and religious institutions.
Nashville’s security market is approaching a level of maturity that Memphis reached years ago for different reasons. In Memphis, security spending is driven by crime. In Nashville, it’s driven by growth. The end result is similar: an expanding market with more clients, more contracts, and more demand for qualified officers than the labor pool can supply.
Technology: AI Cameras and Drone Pilots
The technology adoption that had been progressing steadily across Tennessee’s security industry accelerated in 2023. Two developments stand out.
AI-powered camera analytics moved from pilot programs to operational deployment at several major Tennessee properties. These systems use machine learning to identify specific behaviors, such as loitering, perimeter breaches, and package theft, and alert monitoring centers in real time. The technology doesn’t replace human guards. It makes the monitoring function more efficient by reducing the hours spent watching screens where nothing is happening.
Memphis-area distribution centers and logistics facilities, many of which run camera systems with hundreds of feeds, were early adopters. A human operator monitoring 200 camera feeds catches a fraction of security-relevant events. An AI system monitoring the same feeds catches most of them and sends alerts to the human operator, who then decides how to respond.
Drone security entered the pilot stage in Tennessee during 2023. Several firms tested drone-based patrol programs at large commercial properties and industrial sites. The drones can cover perimeters faster than vehicle patrols, provide aerial perspective that ground-level cameras can’t, and operate in conditions where deploying a human officer would be inefficient.
The regulatory framework for commercial drone security in Tennessee is still developing. FAA restrictions on beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations limit how drones can be deployed. The technology works. The legal infrastructure is catching up.
TDCI: Record License Applications
The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance processed more security-related license applications in 2023 than in any previous year. Both individual guard registrations and company license applications hit records.
The surge in individual registrations reflects the industry’s aggressive hiring. The surge in company licenses reflects new firms entering a market they see as profitable and growing. Not all of those new companies will survive. The security industry has low barriers to entry and thin margins that punish undercapitalized operators.
TDCI’s enforcement division also increased its activity in 2023, conducting more compliance audits and issuing more citations for violations ranging from unlicensed officers working posts to companies operating with expired credentials. The increased enforcement is a positive sign for an industry that needs regulatory credibility.
What 2024 Will Bring
Predictions are easy. Accurate ones are harder. Here’s what the evidence suggests.
The DOJ investigation will produce a findings report in late 2024 or early 2025. The report will identify systemic problems at MPD. A consent decree will follow. Private security demand in Memphis will remain elevated throughout the consent decree process, which could last into the early 2030s.
The guard shortage will persist. Wages will rise modestly. The gap between security pay and warehouse pay will narrow slightly. The gap won’t close. Retention will remain the industry’s central operational challenge.
Nashville’s market will keep growing. The construction pipeline ensures continued demand through 2025 at minimum. School security spending will stabilize at levels significantly higher than pre-Covenant norms.
Technology adoption will accelerate. AI camera analytics will become standard at large commercial properties within two years. Drone security will move from pilot programs to limited operational deployment, pending FAA regulatory developments.
TDCI will face pressure to modernize Tennessee’s security licensing framework. The current statute, written for an era of night watchmen and mall cops, doesn’t adequately address armed response services, technology-integrated security, and the increasingly complex role that private officers play in public safety. Whether the legislature prioritizes modernization in 2024 is an open question. The industry lobby is pushing for it. Legislative attention spans are short.
The Year That Broke the Old Model
The security industry that existed in Tennessee on January 6, 2023, isn’t the same industry that exists today. The events of this year forced a structural change in how Tennessee cities, businesses, and institutions think about safety. Public policing and private security used to operate in clearly separated lanes. Those lanes merged in 2023, and they won’t separate again.
The industry grew. It also got tested in ways it wasn’t prepared for. The guard shortage exposed how fragile the labor model is. The DOJ investigation raised questions about accountability that the industry hasn’t answered. The Covenant shooting revealed gaps in school security that decades of industry growth hadn’t addressed.
Twelve months ago, the private security industry in Tennessee was a mature, steady business. Today it’s a growth industry operating under crisis conditions with a workforce it can’t retain and demand it can’t fully meet.
That’s the story of 2023. The question for 2024 is whether the industry builds the capacity to match the moment, or whether it keeps growing at the top while the foundation stays the same.