Five Memphis police officers have been charged with second-degree murder. The SCORPION unit that employed them no longer exists. And the city is trying to process what happened to Tyre Nichols on the night of January 7th in a way that doesn’t tear everything apart.
Nichols, 29 years old, was pulled over near Raines Road. What followed, captured on body cameras and a city pole-mounted camera, showed a beating so severe that Nichols died three days later at St. Francis Hospital. The footage was released to the public on January 27th. By January 28th, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis had disbanded the SCORPION unit entirely.
The five officers . Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith . Were fired on January 20th and indicted on murder charges on January 26th. The speed of the criminal process was unusual. The public anger driving it was not.
This article isn’t about the criminal case. Others are covering that thoroughly. What I want to examine is what happens to a city’s relationship with private security when its police department becomes the thing people fear.
The Phone Calls Started Immediately
Three security company owners I spoke with in the last week of January described the same experience. Their phones started ringing the day the bodycam footage dropped. By Monday the 30th, call volume was unlike anything they’d seen.
“We had 47 inquiries in three days,” one Memphis-based operator told me. He asked that I not name his company because he didn’t want to appear to be capitalizing on a tragedy. That hesitation, which I heard from multiple sources, says something important about where the industry’s head is right now.
The callers aren’t all the same. Some are business owners who’ve relied on Memphis Police Department patrol presence as their de facto security plan for years. A restaurant owner in Midtown explained it bluntly: “I used to see a squad car drive through my parking lot twice a night. I haven’t seen one in two weeks. My staff is scared.” She’s now requesting bids from three security firms.
Others are residential. Neighborhood associations in East Memphis, Germantown’s border areas, and parts of Cordova have started organizing group security contracts. The model isn’t new . Some HOAs have employed private patrol services for years. What’s new is neighborhoods that never considered it before are now pooling money to hire armed or unarmed patrol cars to drive their streets overnight.
Why This Moment Is Different
Memphis has had police controversies before. Every major city has. What makes the Nichols case different for the private security industry is the combination of three things happening at once.
First, the SCORPION unit was specifically a crime-suppression unit. Its disbandment means the aggressive patrol tactics that , whatever their moral and legal problems . Did put officers on streets in high-crime areas are gone. Residents in those areas now face a real coverage gap while MPD figures out what replaces SCORPION.
Second, the national attention is enormous. Every major news outlet in the country covered the footage release. Memphis is a symbol right now, and that symbol is failure of public safety. For businesses trying to attract customers, conventions, or investment, the perception problem is acute. Hiring visible private security is one of the few immediate things they can do.
Third, the DOJ is expected to launch a pattern-or-practice investigation into MPD. That investigation, if it follows the model used in other cities, will consume department attention and resources for years. Louisville’s consent decree after the Breonna Taylor case reshaped that city’s policing for a generation. Memphis should expect something similar.
For private security companies, this combination creates demand that’s structural, not temporary. These aren’t panic calls that will fade in a month. Businesses and neighborhoods are signing six-month and twelve-month contracts. They’re planning for a Memphis where MPD is diminished, in presence, in trust, and possibly in authority . For the foreseeable future.
The Ethical Tension
I need to be direct about something that several people I interviewed danced around.
Private security companies are about to make a lot of money because the Memphis Police Department beat a man to death.
That’s an uncomfortable sentence. It’s also true. And the industry needs to sit with it rather than rush past it with corporate language about “meeting community needs.”
The best operators I’ve talked to acknowledge this openly. One told me, “I feel sick about why we’re busy. I also know that if we don’t provide this service, these neighborhoods have nobody.” That tension . Genuine disgust at the cause combined with a professional obligation to respond to the effect . Is the emotional reality of this moment for people in the business.
The worst operators, and they exist, are already running Facebook ads targeting Memphis zip codes with messaging that barely stops short of saying “the police can’t protect you.” I’ve seen at least three ads like this in the last 48 hours. They work, commercially speaking. Whether they’re ethical is a different conversation.
There’s a deeper question here that the industry will need to answer as this unfolds. Private security exists, in part, because public safety has gaps. When those gaps widen because of police misconduct, is filling them a public service or exploitation? The answer probably depends on how it’s done.
Companies that price gouge, that hire unvetted guards to fill volume, that cut training corners to get bodies on posts faster . They’re exploiting the crisis. Companies that maintain their standards, charge fair rates, and staff with qualified people are providing a service their community desperately needs. The difference matters.
What the Numbers Look Like
Hard data on the demand spike is still preliminary. The industry doesn’t have a real-time reporting mechanism, and most companies are privately held with no obligation to share revenue figures.
What I can report is anecdotal and directional. Every company I contacted, six firms ranging from small local operators to regional companies with Tennessee offices . Reported increased inquiry volume in the last week of January. The smallest increase anyone cited was 25%. The largest was the 47-calls-in-three-days figure mentioned earlier.
TDCI doesn’t publish real-time licensing data, so we won’t know for months whether new guard license applications spiked after January 27th. Based on conversations with training academy operators, enrollment inquiries have increased. One Nashville-based academy that also trains Memphis candidates said they’ve added an extra armed guard certification class in February to handle demand.
The national firms , Securitas, Allied Universal . Haven’t issued any public statements about Memphis specifically. Their local managers declined to comment when I reached out. That’s expected. National companies tend to avoid associating their brand with specific controversy, even when they’re quietly ramping up operations to meet demand.
The Hiring Problem Gets Worse
Here’s the cruel irony. Demand for private security guards in Memphis just spiked at the exact moment when the labor pool hasn’t changed. There aren’t more qualified, licensed security professionals in Shelby County today than there were on January 6th. There are just more people wanting to hire them.
The predictable consequence is bidding wars. Companies that locked in guards at $15 an hour will see competitors offering $17, then $19. Guards who were content with their current employer will get poached. Companies without deep pockets will lose staff to companies that can afford to pay more.
This happened on a smaller scale after every previous crime spike. The difference now is the speed and intensity. When crime rises gradually, staffing adjusts gradually. When demand jumps 30% in a week, the system breaks.
Training capacity is the other constraint. Tennessee requires 48 hours of training for armed guard certification. You can’t compress that timeline. If a thousand people walked into training academies tomorrow wanting armed guard licenses, the academies couldn’t process them all for months. The pipeline has a fixed throughput, and it was already running near capacity.
What Comes Next
MPD will be under scrutiny for years. The DOJ investigation, if it proceeds as expected, will result in some form of oversight . A consent decree, a monitoring agreement, or at minimum a set of recommended reforms. Those reforms will likely limit the aggressive tactics that SCORPION employed. That means the coverage gap persists.
Memphis City Council members have already begun talking about police oversight boards, use-of-force policy changes, and community policing models. These are important discussions. They also take time. Private security fills the gap while those discussions happen.
The danger for Memphis is a two-tier safety system where businesses and wealthy neighborhoods can afford private security and everyone else relies on a police department that’s understaffed, under-trusted, and under federal investigation. That outcome is already taking shape. It was taking shape before Tyre Nichols died. His death just accelerated a process that was already underway.
For the private security industry in Tennessee, the Nichols aftermath is a defining moment. Not because it’s good for business . Framing it that way misses the point entirely. It’s defining because it forces every company in the state to decide what kind of firm they want to be when the community is hurting and looking to them for help. The ones that answer well deserve the contracts they’ll win. The ones that don’t should be remembered for what they chose.