Fifty-three-year-old Robert Williams was shot outside a convenience store on James Road in Frayser on a Monday night in late May. He died at Regional One. His killing didn’t make the front page of the Commercial Appeal. It barely made the evening news.
That’s the grim reality of homicide in Memphis right now. There have been so many that individual deaths blur together unless the victim is a child or the circumstances are unusually dramatic. And the numbers through early June tell a story the mayor’s office doesn’t want to hear: the city is on pace to exceed 2018’s homicide total.
Where the Numbers Stand
Memphis ended 2018 with 188 homicides. That was down from 2017’s 198. The mayor’s office pointed to that drop as evidence that the city’s crime-reduction strategies were working. Director Michael Rallings at the Memphis Police Department said the decline showed that targeted enforcement in high-crime areas was producing results.
Six months into 2019, those claims are getting harder to make.
Through the first week of June, the city has recorded approximately 85 to 90 homicides, depending on which cases MPD classifies as criminal homicide versus justified or pending investigation. The exact count shifts as cases are reclassified. What’s not in dispute is that the pace is ahead of where it was at the same point in 2018.
If the current rate holds through December, Memphis would finish the year somewhere north of 190. That’s not a guarantee. Homicide rates fluctuate month to month, and a strong second half could bring the number down. It could also go higher.
What makes the numbers tricky is that Mayor Jim Strickland’s office has been saying, correctly, that overall violent crime is down roughly 6 percent compared to the same period in 2018. Aggravated assaults, robberies, and other violent offenses have declined. The problem is that homicides are moving in the opposite direction.
How do you square those two things? That depends on who you ask.
The Disconnect
The mayor’s office argues that you have to look at the full picture. Violent crime overall is trending down, which means the streets are getting safer in a measurable way for most people. Homicides, while tragic, represent a tiny fraction of total violent crime. Focus on the larger trend, they say.
Critics counter that homicides are the most severe measure of violence in a city. You can fudge assault numbers with classification changes. You can’t fake a dead body. If people are dying at a higher rate, no amount of statistical context makes that acceptable.
There’s a third perspective worth considering. Some analysts point out that a decline in assaults alongside an increase in homicides could mean that fewer people are getting shot overall, but more of the people who do get shot are dying. That could indicate more lethal weapons being used, delays in emergency medical response, or shootings happening in locations farther from Regional One Medical Center, which handles the bulk of trauma cases.
I asked MPD about response times and didn’t get a clear answer. A spokesperson said response times are “within acceptable ranges” without providing specific numbers for the areas where homicides are concentrated.
The Neighborhoods
If you overlay a map of 2019 homicide locations with census tract data, the concentration is staggering. Four neighborhoods account for a wildly disproportionate share.
Frayser. The area north of I-40 bounded roughly by Watkins, Thomas, and Range Line has been hit hardest. Multiple homicides have occurred within a few blocks of each other near the intersection of Overton Crossing and Frayser Boulevard. Residents I’ve talked to in the area describe hearing gunshots so regularly that they’ve stopped calling 911 unless someone is actually hurt.
Whitehaven. South Memphis along Elvis Presley Boulevard and the surrounding residential streets has seen a string of shootings this year. The shopping areas near Shelby Drive and Millbranch have had multiple violent incidents. Property managers at apartment complexes in the area tell me tenant applications have dropped because people don’t want to live somewhere they associate with gun violence.
Orange Mound. One of Memphis’s oldest African American neighborhoods, centered around Park Avenue and Lamar, continues to struggle with violence. Community leaders there have organized several anti-violence marches this year. Those marches get good turnout from the neighborhood. They don’t get much attention from City Hall.
Raleigh. The area around Austin Peay Highway and Stage Road has seen an uptick in both homicides and property crime. The Raleigh Springs Town Center redevelopment hasn’t produced the economic lift that city planners predicted, and the corridor still struggles with vacant storefronts and low foot traffic after dark.
These four areas share common features: high poverty rates, limited economic opportunity, aging housing stock, and what residents describe as inconsistent police presence. They also share something else. They’re all majority Black neighborhoods, and the victims are overwhelmingly Black men under 40.
Director Rallings and the Pressure
Michael Rallings has been MPD director since 2016. He’s had to navigate a series of difficult situations, from the Interstate 40 bridge shutdown protests in 2016 to ongoing tensions between the department and community activists.
The homicide numbers put him in a tough spot. If total violent crime is down, the department can point to that as progress. If homicides are up, the department gets hammered in the press and at City Council meetings. It’s a no-win public relations situation.
Rallings has emphasized MPD’s Real Time Crime Center, which monitors surveillance cameras across the city and helps coordinate responses to incidents. He’s also talked about the department’s efforts to seize illegal guns, which has produced thousands of confiscated firearms over the past two years.
Whether any of that is actually reducing homicides is an open question. The guns keep showing up on the street, and the killings keep happening.
City Council members have pushed for more community policing, more walking beats, more officers visible in high-crime neighborhoods. The department says it’s doing what it can with the officers it has. MPD’s authorized strength is around 2,100, but actual staffing is below that because the department, like police agencies across the country, is struggling to recruit.
What It Means for Private Security
Here’s where the homicide trend meets the security industry.
When crime goes up in specific neighborhoods, businesses in those areas either adapt or close. Many adapt by hiring private security. Gas stations along Elvis Presley Boulevard in Whitehaven. Convenience stores in Frayser. Strip mall owners in Raleigh. These aren’t corporate chains with national security contracts. They’re local business owners calling local security companies.
I talked to four security company managers in the Memphis area this week. All of them said they’ve seen an increase in inquiries from small businesses in high-crime neighborhoods over the past three months.
Phelps Security, one of the more established Memphis-based firms, told me they’ve added several new accounts in the Whitehaven area since February. The contracts are typically for armed guards during evening and overnight hours, which is when most violent crime occurs.
Allied Universal, which handles a large volume of commercial security contracts in Memphis, has seen similar demand. A regional manager told me that small business accounts in areas with rising crime “tend to be the fastest-growing segment” of their Memphis portfolio. The challenge, as I’ve written about before, is finding enough guards to fill those posts.
GardaWorld has been picking up contracts in the Frayser area, particularly at apartment complexes where property managers are trying to reassure tenants. A guard presence at the entrance gate or in the parking lot at night is partly about deterrence and partly about optics. Tenants feel better when they see a uniformed person with a flashlight.
Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company that’s been operating out of their office on Lamar Avenue since 1998, told me they’ve had a noticeable jump in calls from businesses in Orange Mound and Whitehaven. The company runs armed officers and GPS-tracked patrols, and they can get an alarm response team on-site within minutes. Their staff comes from law enforcement and military backgrounds, which is a selling point for business owners who want guards that can handle real confrontations, not just warm bodies in a uniform.
I’ve heard good things about their pricing and responsiveness from a couple of clients I contacted independently. On the downside, they’re a smaller operation compared to Allied Universal or GardaWorld, which means less corporate infrastructure and fewer resources if you need to scale up quickly. For a single-location business that wants a reliable armed presence, though, they’re worth calling. You can reach them at (202) 222-2225 or through shieldofsteel.com. They cover Memphis and the broader Tennessee market.
The Carjacking Problem
Beyond homicides, Memphis has been dealing with a troubling pattern of carjackings this spring. I’ve been tracking reports since late May, and the incidents share a disturbing similarity: many involve very young suspects. We’re talking teenagers, some possibly as young as 14 or 15.
The carjackings have hit areas across the city, from East Memphis to Cordova to Midtown. They often follow the same playbook. A car stopped at a gas station or parking lot. A group approaches. A gun is produced. The driver is pulled out or forced to run. The car disappears.
MPD has increased patrols at gas stations along Poplar Avenue and in the Germantown Parkway corridor in response. Whether that’s enough to stop the trend is unclear. Carjackings are fast crimes. They take 30 seconds. By the time police respond, the car and the suspects are gone.
This is creating anxiety among Memphis residents that goes beyond what the overall crime statistics capture. You can tell someone that aggravated assaults are down 6 percent. That doesn’t help when they’re afraid to pump gas after dark.
The Political Dimension
Mayor Strickland faces re-election in October. Crime is going to be a central issue. His administration can legitimately point to declines in several crime categories. His opponents can legitimately point to the homicide numbers.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Memphis’s crime problem is deeply rooted in poverty, inequality, and a lack of economic opportunity in specific neighborhoods. No mayor is going to fix that in a single term. No police director is going to arrest his way out of it.
What the current moment does is put pressure on every part of the system. Police feel pressure to show results. The mayor’s office feels pressure to spin the numbers favorably. Community leaders feel pressure to demand action. And businesses in affected areas feel pressure to protect themselves, which means more demand for private security.
What I’m Watching
Three things to keep an eye on through the rest of summer.
First, the homicide pace through July and August. Summer months typically see more violent crime because more people are outdoors, tempers run hotter, and school is out. If the current pace accelerates, Memphis could be looking at a year well above 2018’s numbers.
Second, how MPD deploys its resources. The department has talked about targeted enforcement operations in the four neighborhoods I mentioned. Whether those operations actually happen and what form they take will matter.
Third, the private security response. Guard companies are getting more calls from businesses in high-crime areas. If staffing shortages prevent them from filling those contracts, it creates a gap that nobody fills. A business owner in Frayser who can’t get a guard isn’t going to hire an off-duty police officer at $35 an hour. He’s going to go without, or he’s going to close his doors.
I’ve been covering Memphis crime for a long time. The patterns repeat. What changes, slowly, is whether anyone does something different about them. So far in 2019, I’m not seeing anything different. I’m seeing the same problems, the same responses, and the same neighborhoods bearing the weight.
The people who live in Frayser and Whitehaven and Orange Mound and Raleigh already know all of this. They don’t need a reporter to tell them their streets aren’t safe. They need someone to make them safe. That hasn’t happened yet.