Through the first nine months of 2024, Memphis recorded roughly 14% fewer Part 1 crimes compared to the same stretch in 2023. Homicides dropped from more than 280 at this point last year to somewhere around 210. Auto thefts, which swelled past 15,000 citywide in 2022, fell by close to 30%.
Those are not small shifts. They’re the kind of year-over-year changes that city officials have been waiting on since the violent crime peak of 2021 and 2022, when Memphis consistently ranked among the most dangerous cities in the country.
What the Precinct Numbers Show
MPD’s nine precincts don’t all tell the same story. Some neighborhoods that carried the heaviest burden during the spike years are seeing real relief. Others haven’t moved much.
The Raleigh precinct, which covers the area north of Summer Avenue and east of Watkins, recorded fewer aggravated assaults through August than it had in either of the previous two years. That area saw a rash of carjackings in late 2022 and early 2023. Those numbers have cooled off. Patrol commanders credit a targeted operation that put undercover units in parking lots along Austin Peay Highway during evening hours.
Frayser tells a more complicated story. Total Part 1 offenses dropped about 8% in the 38127 ZIP code, according to MPD data. Homicides fell from 22 at this point last year to 16. Property crime, though, stayed stubborn. Residential burglaries in Frayser ticked up slightly during Q2, and community leaders on North Watkins say the perception of safety hasn’t caught up with the raw numbers.
Over in Hickory Hill, the 38115 ZIP remained one of the highest-crime areas in the city by raw count. It’s also one of the most populated. When you adjust for the number of people living there, the per-capita rate paints a different picture. Violent incidents per thousand residents dropped from 14.2 in Q3 2023 to about 11.8 this year. That’s still high. A resident on Winchester near Riverdale told me she can tell things have calmed down some, especially on weekday evenings. “I used to hear gunshots two, three nights a week,” she said. “Now it’s maybe once every couple weeks.”
Whitehaven, which covers the 38116 area south of Shelby Drive, tracked close to a 12% decline in total Part 1 crimes. The Elvis Presley Boulevard corridor, long a trouble spot for commercial robberies, saw fewer holdups at gas stations and convenience stores. MPD assigned additional resources to that strip starting in January, and the numbers suggest it’s working.
Homicides: The Headline Number
Memphis had 346 homicides in 2022. That figure dropped to 397 total killings in 2023 (the discrepancy depends on which reporting system you reference; NIBRS versus TIBRS count victims differently, and supplemental homicide reports sometimes reclassify deaths). By the end of September 2024, the city was tracking around 210 homicides, a pace that would put the full-year total somewhere near 280.
That’s a real decline. It’s also still a terrible number. Memphis has about 630,000 people. A city that size recording 280 murders in a year remains an outlier nationally.
The drop hasn’t been evenly distributed. North Memphis and South Memphis accounted for most of the reduction. The Appling Farms area near Germantown Parkway and Shelby County’s eastern edge stayed relatively quiet, as it has for years. The hardest-hit neighborhoods (Orange Mound, Binghampton, parts of Frayser) improved, though residents in those areas would tell you “improved” is relative when your neighbor got shot in July.
Property Crime: Mixed Results
Auto theft tells the clearest success story. Memphis was the car theft capital of the country in 2022. Kia and Hyundai models without immobilizers made up a massive share of those thefts, and social media tutorials on how to steal them went viral. The combination of manufacturer recalls, steering wheel locks distributed by MPD, and Shelby County’s auto theft task force appears to have cut the numbers substantially.
Through September, MPD reported roughly 7,200 motor vehicle thefts, down from over 10,500 at the same point in 2023. That’s a 31% drop. Still a lot of stolen cars. Still a city where you don’t leave your Kia running at the Mapco on Lamar. The problem shrank, not disappeared.
Burglaries held roughly steady across most precincts. Larceny (which includes shoplifting) actually went up in several commercial corridors. The Poplar Avenue retail strip from Perkins to Colonial saw a spike in organized retail theft during the summer months. Mall security at Wolfchase Galleria reported higher detention numbers in Q2 and Q3, according to a source familiar with the data.
What’s Driving the Decline?
There’s no single answer, and anyone who gives you one is selling something.
MPD credits several initiatives: the Real Time Crime Center at 201 Poplar, expanded ShotSpotter coverage in high-crime areas, focused deterrence programs targeting repeat offenders, and the joint operation with ATF that took dozens of guns off the street in the spring.
The Shelby County District Attorney’s office pushed harder on prosecuting violent offenders this year. Bond reform, or the lack of it depending on your perspective, remains a hot-button issue. Defense attorneys argue that more aggressive prosecution hasn’t been proven to deter crime. Prosecutors point to cases where repeat offenders committed violent acts while out on bond for prior violent charges.
Demographic trends might matter too. Memphis has been losing population. The 2020 census counted about 633,000 residents, and estimates suggest the city has shed another 10,000 to 15,000 people since then. Fewer people can mean fewer crimes, all else being equal. It can also mean fewer witnesses, fewer tax dollars for services, and fewer community anchors.
National trends play a role. Violent crime dropped across most major American cities through the first half of 2024. Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta all reported significant declines. Something bigger than any single city’s policing strategy seems to be at work. Researchers at the Council on Criminal Justice noted that the post-pandemic crime surge appears to be receding nationwide, though the reasons remain debated.
The Trust Problem
Numbers on a spreadsheet don’t mean much to someone who got robbed at the AutoZone on Elvis Presley last month.
Memphis residents have heard “crime is going down” before. In 2019, the city touted declining numbers before the pandemic-era surge erased years of progress in a matter of months. Community trust in the data, and in MPD’s ability to sustain gains, is thin.
There’s also the question of reporting. If fewer people call the police, fewer crimes get counted. MPD’s relationship with several communities remains strained in the wake of the Tyre Nichols case in January 2023. Some residents, particularly in predominantly Black neighborhoods, have told reporters they don’t bother calling 911 for anything short of a shooting.
That underreporting concern isn’t unique to Memphis. It’s a national issue. It means the real crime picture could be better or worse than the official data suggests.
What Q4 Could Bring
October through December traditionally sees a slight uptick in property crimes as the holiday shopping season creates more opportunities for theft. Violent crime patterns are less predictable in the fall months.
MPD’s staffing numbers will matter. The department has been struggling with recruitment for years. Authorized strength hovers around 2,300 officers, and actual staffing sits well below that. Every patrol car that doesn’t roll because there’s nobody to drive it is a gap in coverage.
The department’s retention problem isn’t unique to Memphis, either. Police departments across the South are competing for the same candidates. Nearby agencies in Bartlett, Collierville, and Germantown offer comparable or better pay with lower call volumes. A patrol officer in Frayser handles a fundamentally different workload than one in Lakeland.
If Memphis finishes 2024 with total Part 1 crimes down 13% or more from 2023, it’ll be the most significant single-year improvement in recent memory. That’s worth acknowledging. It doesn’t make Memphis safe. It means the trend line finally bent in the right direction, and the question now is whether anyone can keep it there.
The data says things are getting better. The streets will have their own opinion.