Eighty-one people were killed in Memphis during the first three months of 2021. That is not a misprint. Eighty-one homicides in 90 days, a pace that, if it holds, would push this city past 320 killings by December. Last year’s record of 332 is no longer an outlier. It’s starting to look like a floor.
For property managers, business owners, and anyone responsible for safety at a commercial site in Shelby County, the Q1 numbers carry a direct message: the conditions that made 2020 the deadliest year in Memphis history haven’t changed. If anything, they’ve gotten worse.
The Raw Numbers
Memphis Police Department’s year-to-date homicide count through March 31 showed roughly 81 killings, compared to around 75 during the same window in 2020. That puts the annualized projection somewhere north of 320, assuming the typical summer acceleration hasn’t even started yet.
The 2020 total of 332 homicides shattered the previous record of 228, set in 2016. Before that, the city’s modern peak was 213 in 1993. So 2020 didn’t just break a record. It obliterated one. And the first quarter of 2021 suggests that 2020 wasn’t a pandemic-fueled anomaly. It may have been the start of a new normal.
Aggravated assaults are tracking at elevated levels too. MPD reported increases in assaults with firearms across multiple precincts during the first quarter. Carjackings, which became a defining crime category in 2020, have continued at a pace that would have been unthinkable five years ago. On some weeks, MPD was logging 30 or more carjacking reports across the city.
The geography of violence hasn’t shifted much either. Whitehaven, Hickory Hill, Frayser, North Memphis, and Orange Mound remain the neighborhoods absorbing the most damage. The stretch of Elvis Presley Boulevard south of Shelby Drive, the blocks around Hickory Hill Road and Winchester, the corridors along Watkins Street in North Memphis: these are the same areas that dominated the 2020 homicide map.
What 2,000 Officers Means in a City This Size
One number explains almost everything else: MPD currently has roughly 2,000 sworn officers on the force. The department is authorized for approximately 2,400. That 400-officer gap has been widening for years, and it affects every aspect of policing in Memphis.
Two thousand officers for a city of 650,000 people across 324 square miles. Do the math. That works out to about 3.1 officers per thousand residents, well below the national average for cities this size. And that 2,000 figure includes everyone from detectives to desk staff to officers on leave or in training. The actual number of patrol officers available for any given shift is considerably smaller.
Response times tell the story. When a business owner on Summer Avenue calls about a break-in, or a property manager in Cordova reports suspicious activity in a parking garage, the wait can stretch well past 30 minutes for non-emergency calls. Even priority calls sometimes sit longer than they should. Officers are running from one call to the next with little time for proactive patrol.
Chief CJ Davis has been vocal about the staffing crisis. Recruiting is difficult when Memphis officers can drive 20 minutes to Collierville or Bartlett and earn comparable pay with a fraction of the caseload and a fraction of the risk. The department ran multiple recruiting classes in 2020, and they weren’t filling fast enough to offset retirements and resignations.
This isn’t unique to Memphis. Police departments in cities across the country are struggling to hire. What makes Memphis different is the scale of the violence those remaining officers are expected to handle.
Why Private Security Demand Is Surging
Walk down Union Avenue or drive through the Poplar corridor between East Memphis and Germantown, and you’ll notice something that wasn’t as common three years ago: uniformed security guards posted at businesses that never had them before. Retail centers, medical offices, restaurant clusters, apartment complexes. The private security industry in Memphis is experiencing a demand spike that most firms weren’t prepared for.
The connection to police staffing is direct. When a shopping center manager at Southland Mall or a warehouse operator near the Memphis International Airport can’t count on a timely police response, the next call goes to a contract security company. Armed patrol, unarmed standing posts, mobile vehicle patrols: the request volume has climbed steadily since mid-2020 and hasn’t slowed.
Several Memphis-area security firms I’ve spoken with over the past few months report that their phone volume is up 40 to 60 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. One company owner on Lamar Avenue told me his firm turned down more contracts in Q1 2021 than they signed, simply because he couldn’t find enough licensed guards to fill the posts.
That’s the catch. The same labor market pressures squeezing MPD are squeezing private security companies. Tennessee requires security guards to obtain registration through the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance (TDCI) under the Private Protective Services division. The licensing process takes time, and the pool of qualified applicants willing to work armed security posts for $12 to $15 an hour is not exactly overflowing.
The Carjacking Problem Changes the Equation
Carjackings deserve their own section because they’ve changed the risk calculation for commercial properties in ways that other crime categories haven’t.
A burglary or a theft happens when a building is empty or a product is unattended. A carjacking happens to a person, in real time, often in a parking lot. When customers at a Walgreens on Getwell Road or a Kroger on Poplar get carjacked in broad daylight, the psychological impact goes beyond the crime statistics. People stop visiting. Employees quit. Tenants break leases.
MPD data shows carjacking reports running at historic highs through the first quarter. The trend started accelerating in mid-2020 and has continued without meaningful interruption. Some of the highest-frequency locations are the same retail corridors and parking lots where commercial property managers are most desperate for security coverage.
This is why the conversation about private security in Memphis has shifted from “nice to have” to “operational necessity” for a growing number of businesses. It’s not theoretical. The Regions Bank branch on Covington Pike, the shopping centers along Stage Road in Bartlett, the medical offices clustered near Baptist Memorial on Walnut Grove: these are real businesses making real budget decisions based on what’s happening in their parking lots.
The Data Nobody Wants to Talk About
There’s a number that doesn’t get enough attention. Of the 332 homicides in Memphis in 2020, the clearance rate, meaning the percentage of cases where someone was arrested and charged, was significantly below the national average. National clearance rates for homicide hover around 50 to 60 percent. Memphis has historically run below that.
What that means in practice: a substantial number of people who committed homicides in 2020 are still on the streets. They weren’t caught. The detective bureau is overwhelmed, working with fewer investigators than the caseload demands. When homicide detectives are handling 15 or 20 active cases simultaneously, some investigations inevitably stall.
This matters for the 2021 projections because unsolved homicides breed more violence. Retaliatory killings account for a significant share of Memphis homicides. When the person who killed your cousin doesn’t get arrested, some people take that into their own hands. The cycle feeds itself.
Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich’s office has pushed for stronger prosecution of repeat violent offenders, and there’s been political pressure on the judicial system to hold violent suspects without bond. Still, the revolving door at 201 Poplar (the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center) remains a persistent frustration for law enforcement. Suspects arrested on aggravated assault charges sometimes post bond within hours and are back in the same neighborhoods where the incidents occurred.
What the Rest of 2021 Likely Holds
Summer is historically the most violent period in Memphis. Every year, homicides and aggravated assaults tick upward between June and September. Heat, longer days, more people outdoors, school being out: the seasonal pattern is one of the most reliable trends in Memphis crime data.
If Q1 produced 81 homicides during the cooler months, the Q2 and Q3 numbers could push the annual total well past 2020’s record. That’s not a prediction anyone in this city wants to hear, and I take no pleasure in writing it. The data points in one direction.
For commercial property owners and managers, the practical implications are straightforward. If you don’t have a security plan in place, you’re behind. If your security plan relies entirely on MPD response, you’re exposed. The department has 2,000 officers covering a city that needs closer to 2,500 or 3,000, and that gap isn’t closing this year.
The private security firms that are well-staffed and well-managed are going to be in high demand through the summer and beyond. Those that can offer armed mobile patrols, GPS-tracked vehicles, and rapid alarm response will command premium pricing because the market pressure is entirely on the demand side.
Where Memphis Goes From Here
There are no quick fixes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The staffing crisis at MPD took years to develop and will take years to resolve. The homicide rate is a symptom of deeper structural problems: poverty concentration in specific zip codes, a fragmented criminal justice system, and a labor market that makes it hard to recruit people for dangerous, difficult jobs.
What can change in the near term is how businesses and property owners respond to the environment they’re operating in. The companies that took security seriously in 2020 are the ones that avoided the worst outcomes. The ones that waited and hoped things would get better learned an expensive lesson.
Through Q1, Memphis has recorded 81 homicides and counting. The last time the city hit this pace was less than 12 months ago, and that year ended with 332 people dead. The numbers don’t lie, even when we wish they told a different story.