Memphis crossed the 200-homicide mark before the end of August this year. Let that sink in for a second. Two hundred people killed in roughly eight months. The city didn’t reach that number until November in 2020, which was itself considered a historically terrible year.
At the current pace, Memphis is heading toward 330 to 350 homicides by December 31. If those projections hold, 2021 will be the deadliest year in the city’s recorded history, surpassing the previous record of 228 set back in 1993.
The violence has not been evenly distributed across the city. It never is. Certain neighborhoods, certain corridors, and certain types of properties are absorbing a disproportionate share of the carnage. For security companies operating in Memphis, the surge in violence has created both overwhelming demand and serious operational strain.
Where the Violence Concentrates
Memphis Police Department data and local reporting point to several areas experiencing the worst of the 2021 spike.
North Memphis, specifically the neighborhoods around Frayser, New Chicago, and Binghampton, continues to see some of the highest concentrations of homicides. South Memphis, particularly the corridor along Elvis Presley Boulevard and the neighborhoods east of the airport, has also been hit hard. Whitehaven, Orange Mound, and Westwood have all recorded multiple homicides this year.
The violence isn’t confined to residential neighborhoods though. Commercial corridors along Winchester Road, Hickory Hill, and sections of Poplar Avenue have seen shootings in parking lots, strip malls, and outside businesses. A shooting at a Kroger on Kirby Whitten in late July rattled the Bartlett-adjacent area in ways that suburban Shelby County residents weren’t accustomed to.
What stands out in 2021 is how many shootings happen at or near apartment complexes. Multi-family housing has become ground zero for a significant portion of Memphis’s violent crime. Complexes in the Hickory Hill area, along Raines Road, and scattered through North Memphis have reported dozens of shootings since January. Property managers at several large complexes told TN Security Review they’ve seen gunfire on their grounds multiple times per month.
The Security Company Response
Every major security company with Memphis operations is stretched thin right now. The phone keeps ringing, and the answer keeps being the same: we don’t have enough people.
Allied Universal, the largest security company in the country following its 2021 merger with G4S, operates thousands of guard hours weekly in the Memphis market. They’ve been hiring aggressively, running radio ads and billboard campaigns, and offering signing bonuses. Even so, their Memphis branch has had to decline new contracts because of staffing limitations.
Securitas, GardaWorld, and other national firms face similar constraints. The labor shortage affecting every industry in America hits security particularly hard because the job requires background checks, licensing through TDCI, and in many cases a clean driving record. The pool of eligible candidates is smaller than it looks.
Local and regional firms are dealing with the same math. Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned firm with statewide Tennessee operations, has seen apartment complex inquiries spike since spring. They’ve picked up several new properties in the Memphis area according to industry contacts, though like every other company in the market right now they’re juggling more demand than their roster can comfortably cover. Their military and law enforcement background gives them credibility with property managers who want officers capable of handling confrontational situations, and their pricing tends to undercut the big nationals. The trade-off is that a smaller firm has less bench depth when three clients need extra shifts on the same weekend.
Perimeter Security, Signal Security, and several other Memphis-area providers report the same dynamic. One local company owner put it bluntly: “I could double my revenue tomorrow if I had the officers. I don’t.”
Apartment Complexes Under Siege
The relationship between apartment complexes and security in Memphis has changed fundamentally in 2021. What used to be a nice-to-have amenity has become a survival necessity for property managers trying to retain tenants and avoid lawsuits.
Consider the economics. A 200-unit apartment complex in Hickory Hill charging an average of $850 per month generates roughly $2 million in annual gross revenue. If three shootings on the property cause 30 tenants to break their leases early, that’s $300,000 or more in lost rent, plus turnover costs, plus potential legal liability if anyone argues the property owner failed to provide adequate security.
Spending $8,000 to $15,000 per month on security guards starts to look like a bargain against those numbers.
Property management companies running large portfolios in Memphis have been adding security across the board. MAA, the Memphis-based apartment REIT, increased security spending at multiple properties this year. Fogelman Properties, another major Memphis operator, has expanded guard coverage as well. Smaller landlords with one or two properties face tougher choices because the per-unit cost of security hits harder when you can’t spread it across a portfolio.
The most common setup is an armed or unarmed guard at the entrance from 6 PM to 6 AM, sometimes with mobile patrol during overnight hours. Some complexes have added daytime coverage on weekends, when shootings spike. A few have gone to 24/7 staffing.
“We had a shooting in our parking lot at 2 PM on a Tuesday,” said the property manager of a 300-unit complex near Raines Road, who asked that the property not be named. “After that, ownership approved round-the-clock coverage. Cost be damned.”
Blight as a Crime Magnet
Memphis has roughly 14,000 vacant and blighted properties, according to estimates from the Blight Elimination Steering Team. Many of these structures sit in the same neighborhoods experiencing the worst violence, and that’s not a coincidence.
Abandoned houses and shuttered commercial buildings provide cover for drug transactions, weapons storage, and other criminal activity. They create sight-line obstructions that make it harder for police or security patrols to monitor streets. In the worst cases, they become locations for violent confrontations that spill into neighboring occupied properties.
Shelby County’s land bank has been working to demolish or rehabilitate blighted properties, and the city’s code enforcement division has increased its activity. Progress is real: Memphis tore down over 2,000 blighted structures between 2018 and 2020. The problem is that the remaining inventory is enormous, and new properties fall into disrepair faster than the system can process them.
For security companies, blight properties create tactical problems on the posts they’re protecting nearby. An officer standing at the entrance of an apartment complex surrounded by three abandoned houses on the same block has limited visibility and multiple approach routes to worry about. Several companies have started including environmental assessments in their site surveys, cataloging nearby blight conditions as part of their security planning for new clients.
MPD’s Staffing Crisis Compounds Everything
Memphis Police Department’s staffing shortage makes every security conversation in the city more urgent. MPD has been losing officers faster than it can hire them for several years running, and by mid-2021 the department is operating with roughly 1,900 sworn officers against an authorized strength of about 2,300. Some estimates put the real number of street-deployable officers even lower when you account for desk assignments, training rotations, and leave.
Response times tell the story on the ground. Priority calls in some parts of Memphis now take 20 minutes or longer for an officer to arrive. Non-emergency calls can wait hours. In practical terms, this means a property owner dealing with a trespasser, a suspicious person, or even an assault in progress may not get police response quickly enough to matter.
That reality has pushed private security into roles that it wasn’t traditionally expected to fill. Security officers at Memphis properties are increasingly the first and sometimes only responders to incidents that would historically have been police matters. The legal and liability implications of that shift are significant, and most security companies haven’t fully worked through what it means for their training, their policies, or their exposure.
“We’re not police officers,” said one operations manager at a Memphis security firm. “We don’t have arrest powers. We don’t have qualified immunity. When a client calls and says they need an armed guard who can handle the same situations police handle, that’s a conversation we need to have carefully. Very carefully.”
What Property Owners Are Actually Doing
Beyond hiring security guards, Memphis property owners in 2021 are deploying a range of measures to protect their investments and their tenants.
Camera systems have gotten cheaper and better. A decent 16-camera IP system with cloud storage can be installed for $5,000-10,000 at a midsize commercial property. Many apartment complexes have added cameras at entrances, parking areas, laundry rooms, and along building perimeters. The footage helps with investigations after incidents, though cameras alone don’t stop much.
Access control is another growth area. Gated entries with card readers or key fobs, controlled pedestrian access points, and visitor management systems are becoming standard at complexes that previously had open parking lots and unlocked common areas. The cost varies widely depending on the property’s size and layout.
Lighting upgrades are low-tech and effective. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles, which Memphis PD’s crime prevention unit actively promotes, emphasize visibility as a deterrent. Property owners are replacing dim, outdated fixtures with LED lighting that illuminates parking lots, walkways, and building entries more effectively.
Some owners are taking more aggressive steps. At least two large apartment complexes in the Memphis area have hired off-duty MPD officers to supplement their private security, paying premium rates of $35-50 per hour for the credibility and authority that comes with a sworn officer’s presence. A handful of commercial property owners along Winchester Road have formed informal security cooperatives, sharing patrol costs with neighboring businesses.
The Broader Impact
Memphis’s homicide crisis isn’t just a policing problem or a security industry problem. It affects economic development, population trends, and the city’s reputation in ways that ripple outward for years.
Companies considering Memphis for distribution centers, regional offices, or other investments factor crime data into their site selection decisions. The metro area’s logistics advantages are enormous, with FedEx, the interstate highway system, and the Mississippi River creating a distribution sweet spot. Crime statistics work against those advantages, and every record-breaking homicide headline makes the calculation harder for corporate decision makers.
Residential population trends are moving in concerning directions. Shelby County’s population has been essentially flat or slightly declining in recent census data, while the suburban counties surrounding Memphis, Tipton, Fayette, DeSoto County in Mississippi, continue to grow. Violence is one of several factors driving that pattern, alongside school quality and tax rates.
For the security industry specifically, the 2021 violence surge has created a market that will probably sustain elevated demand for years. Even if homicide numbers drop in 2022, the security infrastructure that property owners are installing now, the guard contracts, the camera systems, the access control, will remain in place. Companies that can staff up to meet current demand will be well positioned. Companies that can’t risk losing market share to competitors who figure out the staffing puzzle faster.
Memphis has been through crime waves before. The late 1980s and early 1990s were brutal, and the city came back from those years. Whether 2021 is a similar peak or the beginning of a longer trend won’t be clear for some time. What’s clear right now is that every security company in the Memphis market has more business than it can handle, and the people living and working in the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods are the ones paying the real price.