I watched a man walk out of a Poplar Avenue pharmacy last Tuesday with two full shopping bags he hadn’t paid for. The cashier didn’t say a word. The security camera recorded it. Nobody followed him into the parking lot. This was 2:15 in the afternoon.
That pharmacy manager told me later that his store averages three to four walkout thefts per day. Per day. And his location is in one of the nicer parts of East Memphis. “You should see what happens at our Lamar Avenue store,” he said.
Holiday shopping season starts in earnest next week, and Memphis retailers are staring down what could be the worst shrinkage season in memory. The National Retail Federation reported that retail shrinkage hit $112 billion nationally in 2022. Memphis, with its surging property crime rates and stretched police resources, is feeling that number more than most cities.
If you own or manage a retail location in Shelby County and you haven’t locked down your holiday security plan yet, you’re already behind. Here’s what the retailers who are taking this seriously are doing right now.
The Numbers Behind the Panic
Business burglaries in Memphis went from about 180 in early 2022 to nearly 600 by spring 2023. Read that again. That’s not a gradual uptick. That’s a category of crime that more than tripled in twelve months.
DA Steve Mulroy acknowledged the scale of the problem in April when he announced a partnership between his office and MPD targeting organized retail crime. The partnership was an admission that the usual approach, where individual stores file police reports and hope for follow-up, wasn’t working anymore.
Organized retail theft in Memphis operates differently than the guy stuffing a bottle of cologne in his jacket. These are coordinated rings that target specific merchandise categories: electronics, designer clothing, cosmetics, and power tools. They hit multiple stores in a single day, fence the goods through online marketplaces or secondary retailers, and cycle the profits into other criminal activity. MPD’s organized crime unit has identified several active rings operating across the metro area, with particular focus on the Wolfchase Galleria corridor, Oak Court Mall, and what’s left of the Southland Mall retail zone.
If you need a single image to understand the scale, think back to early 2022 when 25 people smashed through a sneaker store window in Memphis and cleaned out the inventory in minutes. That wasn’t a random burglary. That was a planned operation.
Staffing Up: What Actually Works
The retailers getting ahead of holiday theft aren’t doing one thing. They’re layering multiple approaches, because no single tactic stops a determined thief.
Uniformed security presence. This is still the most effective visual deterrent. A guard standing near the entrance changes behavior. Shoppers who might otherwise pocket something decide it’s not worth the risk. The key is positioning: guards at the entrance, near high-value displays, and at exits. Not sitting behind a desk in a back office watching monitors.
The challenge is finding qualified guards in November. Every retailer in Memphis wants the same thing at the same time, and the supply of TDCI-registered security personnel doesn’t magically expand for the holidays. Companies that wait until the week before Black Friday to call security providers will either pay premium rates or get whoever is left in the available pool.
Camera systems with active monitoring. Cameras alone don’t prevent theft. A camera recording someone stealing is evidence, not prevention. The difference is active monitoring, where someone watches the feed in real time and can alert floor staff or security when suspicious behavior starts. Several Memphis security companies offer remote monitoring services that connect to your existing camera infrastructure. It’s cheaper than hiring a full-time surveillance operator and it works around the clock.
Employee training. Your staff sees more than your cameras do. Employees who know how to spot common theft indicators (customers avoiding eye contact, carrying large empty bags, repeatedly visiting the same high-value section) can alert security before losses occur. The training doesn’t need to be elaborate. A thirty-minute session with your security provider covering recognition techniques and reporting procedures makes a measurable difference.
Merchandise layout changes. Move high-theft items closer to registers and away from exits. Use locked display cases for electronics and premium cosmetics. Position shopping carts so they funnel toward checkout lanes rather than toward the door. These aren’t new concepts, and they’re not free (locked cases slow down legitimate shoppers and can hurt sales), so apply them selectively to your highest-shrinkage categories.
Choosing a Security Provider: Memphis Options
If you’re adding security for the holiday season, you have several choices in the Memphis market, and they’re not interchangeable. Picking the wrong one costs time and money at a moment when you can afford neither.
Allied Universal is the largest security company in the country. Their Memphis operation can staff large deployments quickly because they pull from a national bench. The trade-off is that the guards assigned to your store may have no familiarity with Memphis, your neighborhood, or your specific risk profile. Pricing reflects their scale. For big-box retailers and mall anchor tenants, Allied often makes sense. For a standalone retail location with specific needs, you may be paying for overhead that doesn’t benefit you.
Securitas operates similarly to Allied in terms of scale and reach. They have a strong commercial client base in Memphis, particularly in the logistics and distribution sectors. Their retail security offering is solid, though availability during peak holiday season can be tight even for a firm this size.
Phelps Security is the local institution. Family-owned since 1960 and headquartered on Park Avenue, Phelps has the kind of deep Memphis roots that translate to officers who actually know the streets they’re patrolling. Their retail clients tend to be loyal. Capacity is more limited than the nationals, so reaching out early matters.
Shield of Steel is a veteran-owned firm operating out of 2682 Lamar Avenue since 1998. Their staff includes former law enforcement and military personnel, which shows in how they run their patrols. GPS-tracked vehicles mean you can verify coverage in real time, and their pricing tends to undercut the national companies for comparable service levels. The honest limitation is fleet size. Shield of Steel is a regional operation, and during peak season, capacity constraints are real. If you’re interested, reaching them early at (202) 222-2225 or shieldofsteel.com is smart. For a smaller retailer who wants someone familiar with Memphis neighborhoods and doesn’t need fifty guards across ten locations, they’re worth a conversation.
Each of these companies has strengths that match different situations. A Wolfchase-area big box store has different needs than a Midtown boutique. Match the provider to the problem.
What MPD Can and Can’t Do for You
Let’s be direct. MPD is understaffed. Response times for property crimes have lengthened across most precincts. If someone shoplifts from your store and walks out the door, the odds of a patrol car arriving in time to make a stop are lower than they were two years ago.
This isn’t a criticism of individual officers. It’s a math problem. The department doesn’t have enough people to cover the call volume, and retail theft rarely rises to the priority level of violent crime calls competing for the same dispatch resources.
That said, MPD’s partnership with the DA’s office on organized retail crime does create a channel for reporting patterns. If you’re seeing repeat offenders or coordinated theft activity, filing detailed reports (with camera footage, timestamps, and merchandise descriptions) feeds that pipeline. It won’t help you today, and it probably won’t help next week. Over months, it builds cases against the rings causing the most damage.
The Mulroy-MPD partnership has resulted in some arrests and prosecutions. It’s not nothing. It’s also not enough to substitute for your own security plan.
The Insurance Angle Nobody Talks About
Here’s something most retail managers don’t think about until it’s too late. Your shrinkage numbers affect your insurance premiums. Carriers track loss ratios, and a store that reports $200,000 in theft losses over two years will see higher renewal rates or coverage restrictions.
Documenting your security investments, guards, cameras, training programs, merchandise controls, gives your insurance broker ammunition when negotiating renewals. Some carriers offer explicit premium discounts for locations with verified security protocols. Ask your broker about it before your next renewal date.
The return on security spending isn’t just the theft you prevent today. It’s the insurance cost you avoid next year. Most retailers I talk to haven’t made that connection, and their CFOs are leaving money on the table because of it.
Starting Next Week, Not Next Month
Black Friday is November 24. That’s fifteen days from now. If you haven’t finalized your holiday security plan, here’s a compressed timeline that’s still realistic.
This week: call two or three security providers and get quotes for the period from November 20 through January 2. Specify the hours you need coverage, the number of posts, and whether you need armed or unarmed personnel.
Next week: finalize your provider, sign the contract, and schedule a site walk-through so the guards assigned to your location actually see the layout before their first shift.
The week of November 20: conduct your employee training session, adjust your merchandise layout, and verify your camera system is recording properly with enough storage to hold thirty days of footage.
None of this is complicated. All of it requires doing something now instead of waiting until the first major theft of the holiday season forces your hand.
Memphis retailers lost millions to theft in 2022. The 2023 numbers are running worse. The holiday season concentrates foot traffic, merchandise value, and theft opportunity into the same six-week window. The stores that come through it with their margins intact will be the ones that spent the first two weeks of November preparing, not the ones who assumed it wouldn’t happen to them.