Memphis Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center sits in a room full of monitors on the second floor of the Donnelley J. Hill State Office Building. On any given shift, analysts watch dozens of camera feeds from across the city, pulling up footage from intersections, public housing complexes, and commercial corridors. When a 911 call comes in, the system automatically identifies the nearest connected cameras and displays them on screen before officers even arrive on scene.
That capability is about to get a lot bigger. MPD is in the middle of a $1.9 million expansion of its surveillance and body camera infrastructure, and the centerpiece of that expansion is a program called Connect 2 Memphis. If you own or manage a commercial property in Shelby County, this program is going to show up in your inbox sooner or later. Here’s what you need to know about it.
How Connect 2 Memphis Works
The concept is simple. MPD wants access to your existing security cameras, and they’re willing to make the technical integration painless.
Through the Connect 2 Memphis program, businesses and residents can link their private surveillance cameras directly to the Real Time Crime Center’s monitoring network. The connection runs through devices made by Fusus (now part of Axon), specifically the fususCORE hardware unit that plugs into your existing camera system’s network video recorder or DVR.
The fususCORE device costs $350 for up to four cameras. After that, there’s a $150 annual subscription fee. Once installed, your cameras become visible to RTCC analysts whenever they need to pull feeds near your location. You don’t lose control of your cameras or your footage. MPD can view the live feed through the Fusus platform, and they can request recorded footage, which you can approve or deny. The system doesn’t give police blanket access to your stored video.
For businesses that already have camera systems installed (and in Memphis, that’s most commercial properties at this point), the cost of participation is relatively low. Three hundred fifty dollars and $150 a year is less than a single month of overnight security patrol. The question isn’t really about cost. It’s about whether the tradeoffs make sense for your operation.
What the RTCC Actually Does During a Call
The sales pitch from MPD is compelling because the technology genuinely works well in specific scenarios.
When a robbery call comes in from, say, the Poplar Avenue corridor near East Memphis, RTCC analysts can immediately pull up every connected camera within a defined radius of that location. They can track a suspect vehicle’s direction of travel across multiple camera feeds before patrol units even reach the scene. They can relay physical descriptions and vehicle information to responding officers in real time.
For high-priority calls like shootings, carjackings, and armed robberies, this capability shaves minutes off response coordination. In a city where MPD is operating with fewer officers than it needs, that kind of force multiplication matters. One analyst watching six camera feeds can provide intelligence that would otherwise require multiple officers driving around looking for a suspect.
The RTCC has been operational in some form since 2017, and MPD credits it with assisting in hundreds of investigations. The July expansion aims to dramatically increase the number of connected private cameras across the city. MPD’s stated goal is to build a network dense enough that there are minimal surveillance gaps along major corridors and in high-crime areas.
The Privacy Question Nobody Wants to Have
Here’s where it gets complicated, and where business owners need to think carefully before signing up.
When you connect your cameras to the RTCC, you’re participating in a government surveillance network. That’s not hyperbole. It’s a factual description of what the program does. Your cameras, which you installed to monitor your own property, become nodes in a citywide police monitoring system.
For some business owners, that’s exactly what they want. A gas station owner on Elvis Presley Boulevard told me he connected his cameras the week the program launched in his area. “I want the police watching my lot,” he said. “I’ve had three armed robberies in two years. If a camera feed helps them catch somebody, I’m all for it.”
For others, the calculus is different. A restaurant owner in Cooper Young raised concerns about customer privacy. “My patio cameras face the sidewalk,” she said. “I’m not sure my customers would be comfortable knowing MPD can pull up a live feed of them eating dinner whenever they want.”
Civil liberties organizations in Memphis have raised questions about the program’s oversight structure. Who decides when RTCC analysts can access private camera feeds? Is there an audit trail? What happens to footage that’s pulled during an investigation but turns out to be irrelevant? These aren’t hypothetical concerns. Cities across the country, from Detroit to New Orleans, have implemented similar camera integration programs and faced lawsuits over surveillance overreach.
MPD has said that camera access is logged and that feeds are only pulled in connection with active calls or investigations. There is no published policy document that I’ve been able to find that details the specific access controls, retention policies, or oversight mechanisms for Connect 2 Memphis data. That absence of documentation should concern business owners who are weighing participation.
The Practical Case for Joining
Set aside the privacy debate for a moment and look at the operational reality facing Memphis businesses in July 2023.
MPD is short hundreds of officers. Response times for non-emergency calls can stretch past an hour in some precincts. Property crime rates are running well above national averages. Carjackings remain a persistent problem in commercial areas across the city.
In that environment, connecting your cameras to the RTCC is one of the cheapest force multipliers available. It doesn’t replace having a security guard or an alarm system. What it does is increase the odds that if something happens on or near your property, the police response will be faster and more informed.
The math works especially well for businesses along high-traffic corridors. If you’re on Summer Avenue, Lamar Avenue, or the Whitehaven stretch of Elvis Presley Boulevard, your cameras are likely capturing activity that’s relevant to investigations happening nearby. Connecting to the RTCC makes your footage useful to police without requiring you to manually review hours of video or respond to individual detective requests.
Several property management companies in Memphis have already connected cameras across multiple properties. For a company managing 10 or 15 commercial locations, the total cost (roughly $3,500 in hardware plus $1,500 per year in subscriptions) is a rounding error on the annual security budget.
What the $1.9 Million Buys
The broader surveillance expansion goes beyond Connect 2 Memphis. MPD’s $1.9 million allocation covers upgraded body cameras for officers, additional fixed cameras at high-crime intersections, and improved software for the RTCC itself.
The body camera upgrades are significant for a department under DOJ scrutiny. Following the Tyre Nichols case in January, body camera footage became a central part of the public accountability conversation in Memphis. Better cameras with longer battery life and more reliable upload systems are a direct response to that pressure.
The fixed intersection cameras are being installed in areas identified by MPD’s crime mapping data as persistent hot spots. These are separate from the Connect 2 Memphis private camera network. They’re city-owned, city-maintained, and accessible to RTCC analysts at all times without any third-party approval.
The combination of public fixed cameras, private connected cameras, and body camera footage creates a surveillance density that Memphis has never had before. Whether that density produces meaningful crime reduction or simply better documentation of crimes that still occur is a question that won’t be answered for at least a year.
What Business Owners Should Do Right Now
If you’re managing a commercial property in Memphis, here’s the practical decision framework.
Start by auditing your existing camera system. Most business camera setups in Memphis are three to seven years old and running on aging DVRs with limited storage. Before connecting to the RTCC, make sure your cameras actually produce usable footage. A 720p camera from 2016 with a dirty lens isn’t going to help MPD identify a suspect. It’s also not going to help you with an insurance claim.
If your cameras are current and functional, evaluate whether Connect 2 Memphis makes sense for your location. Properties on major corridors and in high-crime areas benefit most. A small office in Germantown with minimal street-facing cameras probably won’t see much value from participation.
Review your lease agreements and tenant communications. If you’re a property manager connecting cameras that capture tenant common areas or public-facing spaces, your tenants should know about it. This isn’t a legal requirement under current Tennessee law, and it is a business relationship consideration that’s worth getting right.
Contact MPD’s RTCC directly to ask about the enrollment process and timeline for your area. The expansion is rolling out in phases, and some neighborhoods are further along than others. The RTCC team can also advise on camera placement and specifications that maximize the value of the connection.
The surveillance expansion is happening whether individual businesses participate or not. The fixed cameras are going up. The body cameras are being deployed. The question for Memphis business owners isn’t whether the city is watching. It’s whether you want your cameras to be part of what they see.