The camera mounted above the intake desk at 201 Poplar isn’t new. What’s new is that it feeds into a network of over 2,000 cameras across Shelby County, all monitored from the Real Time Crime Center on the building’s third floor. Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings pushed for the RTCC expansion before he left in early 2021, and his successor CJ Davis has kept the momentum going. The city approved funding for 400 additional cameras this fiscal year alone.
Private security companies in Memphis are watching this public investment with a mix of admiration and anxiety. The technology works. Everyone knows it works. The question bouncing around conference rooms from East Memphis to Whitehaven is simpler and harder: can we afford it?
Body Cameras Cross the Line Into Private Security
For years, body-worn cameras were a law enforcement tool. MPD officers started wearing them after the 2015 rollout, and the footage became a regular feature in internal affairs investigations and courtroom proceedings. Private security firms mostly stayed on the sidelines.
That changed in 2021.
Three Memphis-based contract security companies have deployed body cameras to their armed officers this year, according to interviews with company owners who asked that specific deployment numbers stay confidential. The reasons vary. One company started issuing cameras after a client at a Germantown office park demanded them as a contract requirement. Another made the switch after an incident on a Poplar Avenue property where a guard’s account of a confrontation with a trespasser didn’t match witness statements.
“The liability protection alone pays for the equipment in the first year,” said one operations manager at a firm running about 40 armed posts across Shelby County. A basic body camera setup runs $300 to $800 per unit, with cloud storage adding $15 to $50 per camera monthly. For a company staffing 40 officers, that’s a $12,000 to $32,000 initial investment plus roughly $7,200 to $24,000 annually for storage.
Those numbers look manageable for mid-size firms. For the dozens of smaller companies operating 5 to 15 posts around Memphis, the math gets painful fast. A company running eight guards can justify the cameras only if clients are willing to absorb part of the cost through higher billing rates. And in a market where contract security prices have been flat for years while wages creep upward, getting clients to pay more for anything is a hard sell.
GPS Tracking and the Death of the Random Patrol
Drive past any commercial property in the Hickory Hill corridor on a weeknight and you’ll see the same scene: a security sedan parked near the entrance, engine idling, officer scrolling a phone. The client pays for “regular patrols.” What they get depends entirely on whether anyone is tracking the vehicle.
GPS fleet tracking has changed this dynamic for the companies willing to invest. Shield of Steel, the veteran-owned firm on Lamar Avenue, runs GPS tracking across its patrol fleet and provides clients with automated reports showing exactly when vehicles arrived, how long they stayed, and what routes they drove. Securitas has used fleet management tools for years across its national operations. Several regional firms have adopted similar systems in the past 18 months.
The data these systems produce is reshaping client expectations. Property managers who once accepted “we patrol your site nightly” now want timestamped proof. One apartment complex manager in Raleigh told me she switched security providers in September after GPS reports from her new company revealed that her previous vendor was spending an average of four minutes per visit on a property that required 20-minute patrols.
“You can’t argue with GPS data,” she said. “Either the car was there or it wasn’t.”
The cost of basic GPS tracking has dropped sharply. A cellular GPS unit costs $15 to $30 per month per vehicle, with installation taking less than an hour. Even the smallest security company can afford it. The resistance isn’t financial. It’s cultural. Some company owners don’t want a permanent record of how their officers actually spend their shifts.
Mobile Credentials and the Access Control Shift
The commercial access control market in Memphis has been moving toward mobile credentials since before the pandemic, with the transition accelerating through 2021. Traditional key cards and fob systems still dominate most office buildings downtown, but new installations increasingly offer smartphone-based entry.
At the Clark Tower on East Poplar, the property management company completed an access control upgrade this fall that lets tenants use a phone app instead of a plastic card. The pitch to tenants was convenience. The pitch to the building owner was different: mobile credentials can be revoked instantly, they generate detailed access logs, and tenants can’t “lose” their phone the way they lose key cards three times a year.
The security implications cut both ways. Mobile credentials create better audit trails and eliminate the cloning risk that plagues older proximity card systems. A determined attacker can copy an HID card for under $50 using equipment bought online. Cloning someone’s phone-based credential is orders of magnitude harder.
On the other hand, phone-based systems introduce new failure points. Dead batteries, broken screens, and spotty cellular coverage in parking garages all create situations where authorized people can’t get through a door. Every building using mobile credentials needs a fallback method, which usually means keeping the old card readers active, which partially defeats the purpose of switching.
Temperature Screening: COVID’s Stubborn Legacy
Walk into the lobby of any major Memphis office building and you’ll probably still encounter a temperature screening station. Some are staffed by security officers holding handheld thermometers. Others are automated kiosks with thermal cameras that flash green or red as people walk past.
These stations were emergency deployments in mid-2020. Nearly two years later, they’ve become semi-permanent fixtures that nobody quite knows what to do with.
The medical evidence on temperature screening as a COVID prevention tool is, frankly, not encouraging. Asymptomatic carriers pass through temperature checks without issue. The FDA noted early in the pandemic that elevated skin temperature doesn’t reliably indicate infection. Several large employers in Memphis have quietly stopped requiring temperature checks for employees while leaving the equipment in place for visitors.
Security companies staffing these stations find themselves in an odd position. The service generates billing hours and keeps officers employed during a labor shortage. Removing the screening stations means losing posts. So companies keep proposing temperature checks in contract renewals, and facility managers keep approving them, and everyone involved understands the screening is more theatrical than medical.
One security director at a healthcare facility near the Memphis Medical District was more direct about it: “We know the temperature checks don’t catch COVID cases. They catch the perception that we’re doing something about COVID. Right now, that perception matters to our patients.”
Video Analytics: Promise Versus Reality
The Real Time Crime Center’s expansion has pushed video analytics into local conversations about security technology. The concept sounds straightforward: software that watches camera feeds and flags unusual activity, from someone loitering near a restricted door to a vehicle circling a parking lot repeatedly.
In practice, the technology’s track record in Memphis is mixed. Several commercial properties that installed analytics-equipped camera systems in 2020 and 2021 report high false-alarm rates, especially outdoors. Wind-blown debris, stray animals, and shifting shadows all trigger alerts. One property manager running a warehouse complex near the Memphis International Airport said his analytics system generated over 200 alerts in its first month. Fewer than 10 required any response.
“We spent $45,000 on a system that essentially cries wolf,” he said. His team has since adjusted the sensitivity settings and reduced false alerts to a manageable level, though he’s still not convinced the technology justified the cost compared to hiring an additional overnight guard.
The firms selling these systems counter that the technology improves with calibration and that the 2021 generation of analytics performs significantly better than what was available even two years ago. They’re probably right. The gap between what the sales pitch promises and what the first month delivers remains wide enough to make budget-conscious Memphis businesses hesitant.
The Real Trade-Off: Cameras or Wages?
Every technology investment a Memphis security company makes in 2021 happens against the backdrop of a labor shortage that has pushed starting wages for unarmed guards from $9 to $10 per hour in 2019 to $12 to $14 per hour today. Armed guards who commanded $13 to $15 two years ago now expect $16 to $20, and many companies still can’t fill positions.
This creates a genuine strategic tension. A company with $50,000 to invest can either upgrade its technology stack (cameras, GPS, body cameras, analytics) or use that money to raise wages and attract more applicants. The right answer depends on the company’s business model, client base, and growth plans. There is no universal correct choice.
Companies serving high-end commercial clients in East Memphis and Germantown tend to invest in technology because their clients expect it and will pay the higher billing rates that fund it. Companies working apartment complexes and retail sites in South Memphis, Frayser, and Whitehaven face clients with tighter budgets who need warm bodies on-site more than they need GPS reports.
The firms that figure out how to do both (invest in basic technology while keeping wages competitive) will be the ones positioned best heading into 2022. The ones that try to solve the labor shortage purely with technology, or ignore technology entirely, will likely find themselves losing contracts to competitors who found the balance.
What 2022 Will Demand
The technology trends shaping Memphis security in 2021 aren’t going away. If anything, they’ll accelerate. The RTCC’s camera network will keep expanding. Body cameras will spread from early adopters to industry standard within two to three years. GPS tracking will become a baseline expectation for any company pitching patrol services. Mobile access credentials will keep replacing plastic cards one building at a time.
The companies that resist these changes aren’t making a principled stand. They’re falling behind. And in a market where clients have more choices than ever and can compare providers with a few phone calls, falling behind means losing contracts.
The real question for Memphis’s security industry isn’t whether to adopt technology. That debate ended sometime in 2020. The question is how to pay for it without sacrificing the people who make the technology useful. A GPS-tracked patrol vehicle with nobody qualified to drive it doesn’t protect anything.