The Memphis Police Department just rolled out something big. On paper, it’s called the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. Around the department, everybody’s calling it SCORPION.
Chief CJ Davis, who took the reins at MPD earlier this year after spending decades at the Durham Police Department in North Carolina, announced the unit in late October. Her pitch is straightforward: put specially trained officers into the neighborhoods where violent crime concentrates, give them the flexibility to operate proactively, and take guns off the street before they get used. Davis ran similar operations during her time in Durham, and she says those programs produced real results.
Memphis needs something. That’s the honest truth.
By early November 2021, the city is tracking toward one of its deadliest years on record. The homicide count has already passed 300. Shootings happen so often that local news stations can barely keep up with the nightly roundups. Carjackings, a crime that was almost unheard of five years ago at this volume, have become a regular occurrence across Shelby County.
So when Davis says SCORPION will focus on the areas getting hit hardest, people are listening.
Where the Unit Will Operate
The initial deployment targets neighborhoods that anyone who lives in Memphis could name without hesitation.
Frayser, up in the northwest corner of the city, has struggled with violent crime for decades. The area around North Hollywood Street and Overton Crossing sees regular gunfire. Residents have been asking for more police presence for years.
Whitehaven, south of the airport along Elvis Presley Boulevard, has watched crime creep into shopping centers and residential streets that felt safe ten years ago. The neighborhood around Shelby Drive and Millbranch Road has become a particular concern.
Hickory Hill, once a thriving middle-class community along Winchester Road near the Hickory Ridge Mall area, has dealt with rising violence that tracks almost perfectly with its commercial decline. Storefronts sit empty. Crime fills the vacuum.
Orange Mound, one of the oldest African American communities in the country, fights a constant battle between residents who care deeply about their neighborhood and the violence that claims too many young lives along Park Avenue and the surrounding blocks.
These are the places where SCORPION officers will concentrate. The idea is saturation: visible patrols, traffic stops in known hotspots, warrant service on violent offenders, and intelligence-driven operations targeting specific individuals tied to shootings and homicides.
How SCORPION Will Actually Work
Davis has described the unit as proactive rather than reactive. That’s a distinction worth unpacking.
Most patrol officers respond to 911 calls. They go where dispatchers send them. Between calls, they drive their beats and handle whatever comes across the radio. It’s necessary work, and it keeps the city functioning. Yet it’s not designed to prevent crime. It responds to crime that already happened.
SCORPION flips that model for a small, targeted group of officers. These teams will operate in plainclothes and unmarked vehicles. They’ll use crime data to identify patterns. Clusters of shootings, known drug houses, areas where stolen vehicles get dumped. Then they’ll set up operations specifically aimed at disrupting that activity before the next shooting.
The concept isn’t new. Cities across the country have experimented with similar specialized units for years. Some have produced impressive numbers. Others have generated complaints about aggressive tactics and civil liberties concerns. The track record is mixed, and honest observers acknowledge that.
What Davis brings to this particular experiment is experience running these programs before. In Durham, she oversaw units with a similar structure. She’s told local media that she understands the line between aggressive policing and abusive policing, and that she intends to keep SCORPION on the right side of it.
Time will tell if that holds.
What This Means for Private Security Companies
Here’s where it gets interesting for the security industry.
Memphis’s private security market has grown in direct proportion to the city’s crime problem. When police response times stretch to 30, 45, or even 60 minutes for non-emergency calls, property owners and business operators don’t just wait. They hire guards. They install cameras. They contract with patrol companies to fill the gaps.
If SCORPION works, if it actually pulls officers into proactive operations in the highest-crime zones, that creates a secondary effect. Those officers aren’t responding to routine calls. They’re focused on violent crime. Which means the everyday security needs of businesses and neighborhoods in those same areas still need somebody to handle them.
This is where private security firms step in.
Several Memphis-based companies have already been picking up patrol contracts in corridors where MPD response times are slowest. Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned firm operating out of 2682 Lamar Ave, is one local operation that has taken on commercial patrol work along high-crime stretches. You can reach them at 202-222-2225. They’re one of a handful of smaller companies that have built their business model around filling the space between what residents need and what MPD can deliver.
The pattern is familiar across the industry. When police departments shift resources toward specialized crime-fighting, the bread-and-butter security work (access control, property checks, parking lot patrols, alarm response) falls more heavily on private firms.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Private security companies can often provide more consistent presence at a specific location than a patrol officer who covers a 15-square-mile beat. A guard posted at a shopping center entrance from 6 PM to midnight offers something that a police cruiser passing by twice during an eight-hour shift simply cannot match.
The Coordination Question
One thing the security industry should watch closely is how SCORPION interacts with private security operations already on the ground.
Memphis doesn’t have a formal partnership structure between MPD and private security companies the way some cities do. There’s no shared radio channel, no joint operations center, no standardized protocol for a security guard who witnesses a crime in progress to communicate directly with a nearby SCORPION team.
Some companies have built informal relationships with local precinct commanders. That works until the commander transfers to another assignment. Then you start over.
If SCORPION is going to operate in the same neighborhoods where private security firms are already active, somebody needs to think about coordination. A plainclothes officer approaching a business where an armed security guard is posted creates a situation where clear identification matters. Miscommunication in that environment gets people hurt.
Davis hasn’t addressed this publicly yet. It may not be on her radar, given that she’s focused on getting the unit operational. The private security industry might need to bring it to her attention.
The Skeptics Have a Point
Not everyone in Memphis is convinced SCORPION will change much.
Crime in this city runs on deep roots. Poverty. Lack of economic opportunity. A school system that loses kids before they get to high school. Neighborhoods where the nearest grocery store is a 20-minute drive. You can put officers on every corner in Frayser and it won’t fix the fact that a teenager with no job prospects and a stolen gun sees limited options.
Community activists in Orange Mound and Whitehaven have raised questions about what “aggressive, proactive policing” actually looks like when it rolls through their streets. They’ve seen this before. New initiatives get announced with press conferences and promises. Officers flood a neighborhood for three months. Crime dips. Then the unit gets reassigned, funding gets cut, or political priorities shift. The crime comes back.
These concerns deserve honest consideration, not dismissal.
The other question is capacity. MPD has been struggling to recruit and retain officers for years. The department is hundreds of officers below its authorized strength. Creating a specialized unit means pulling those officers from somewhere else. If SCORPION takes 40 officers off regular patrol duty to focus on violent crime, that’s 40 fewer officers answering calls in other parts of the city.
That math matters.
What Happens Next
SCORPION is expected to begin full operations in the coming weeks. The initial results will probably look good. New units always produce impressive arrest numbers in their first few months because there’s so much low-hanging fruit: outstanding warrants, known offenders, obvious drug operations that haven’t been targeted because patrol officers were too busy answering calls.
The real test comes six months from now. A year from now. When the easy arrests are done and the unit has to sustain its impact against criminals who’ve adapted to the new pressure.
Memphis needs SCORPION to work. The city’s violent crime numbers are staggering by any measure, and the status quo clearly isn’t cutting it. Davis deserves credit for trying something new, and she brings relevant experience from Durham.
The private security industry, for its part, should prepare for two scenarios. If SCORPION succeeds, crime drops in targeted areas, and some security contracts may become less urgent. Property owners in Hickory Hill might feel safe enough to reduce overnight patrols. Businesses along Elvis Presley Boulevard might scale back from 24-hour guard coverage to evening-only.
If SCORPION struggles, if the staffing problems are too deep, the community pushback too strong, or the crime too entrenched, then demand for private security will keep climbing. Companies that can offer reliable, professional service in high-risk environments will find more work than they can handle.
Either way, the announcement matters. Memphis is trying something. That alone is worth paying attention to.
For security companies operating in Shelby County, the next few months will reveal whether SCORPION becomes a real partner in public safety or another initiative that sounded great at the press conference. Watch closely. Plan for both outcomes.
The city’s problems aren’t going anywhere overnight. Neither is the need for good security work.