Memphis recorded 296 homicides in 2024. That’s down from 397 the year before, a 30% drop that caught even optimistic observers off guard. Total reported crime fell 13% across the board. For the first time in years, the city’s crime numbers are trending in a direction that doesn’t make national news for the wrong reasons.
For the private security industry, those numbers carry a different kind of weight. Falling crime rates don’t automatically translate to falling demand for guards, cameras, and alarm monitoring. The relationship between crime and security spending has never been that simple, and 2025 is shaping up to prove the point.
The Numbers Behind the Headlines
Mayor Paul Young took office on January 1, 2024. Within his first week, he announced a public safety task force and made crime reduction the centerpiece of his administration. Twelve months later, the results are hard to argue with.
Homicides dropped from 397 to 296. That’s the lowest annual total Memphis has posted since 2019. Aggravated assaults fell. Motor vehicle thefts, which had been a persistent headache across Shelby County, dropped 39% compared to the previous year. Downtown Memphis, which had been hemorrhaging foot traffic partly because of safety perceptions, reported a 26.4% decline in overall crime.
These aren’t marginal improvements. For a city that spent 2023 grappling with the aftermath of the Tyre Nichols case and a deeply fractured relationship between the public and MPD, the turnaround has been fast.
The question every security company owner in the Mid-South should be asking right now: what does a safer Memphis mean for my bottom line?
Fewer Crimes, Same Anxiety
Here’s the thing about crime statistics. They measure what gets reported. They don’t measure how safe people feel walking through a parking garage on South Main at 9 p.m. They don’t capture the property manager in Cordova who just renewed a guard contract because her tenants threatened to break their leases over a string of car break-ins that never showed up in any police report.
Perception lags reality by months, sometimes years. Memphis spent the better part of a decade earning a reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in America. One good year won’t erase that. And as long as the perception gap exists, security spending holds.
I talked to three security company owners in the last two weeks of December. None of them reported contract cancellations tied to the improving crime numbers. Two said they’d signed new clients in Q4 2024. The third said his pipeline for January was the strongest it had been in two years.
“Nobody’s calling me to say crime went down so they don’t need us anymore,” one of them told me. He runs a mid-size firm with about 40 guards working sites across Shelby and Fayette counties. “If anything, companies are spending smarter. They want cameras where they used to want warm bodies, and they want data on response times.”
That last part matters. The industry isn’t shrinking. It’s shifting.
Where Growth Is Coming From
Memphis sits on top of one of the busiest logistics corridors in North America. Memphis International Airport, which handles more cargo tonnage than any other airport in the Western Hemisphere thanks to FedEx, continues to expand. The warehousing and distribution center boom along the I-269 corridor has been creating demand for perimeter security, access control systems, and mobile patrol services since 2022, and the construction pipeline suggests more is on the way.
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development reported that Shelby County added over $1.2 billion in new capital investment projects during the 2023-2024 fiscal year. That includes manufacturing, distribution, and mixed-use developments. Every new warehouse needs security during construction. Every completed facility needs an access control plan, camera system, and often a manned guard presence during overnight hours.
Downtown Memphis is in the middle of its own construction cycle. The convention center renovation, multiple hotel projects, and the ongoing development around the Pinch District are creating short-term construction security demand and long-term facility security contracts. If you run a security company and you’re not bidding on construction site work right now, you’re leaving money on the table.
There’s also the healthcare sector. Regional One Health, Methodist Le Bonheur, and Baptist Memorial all expanded their physical footprints in 2024. Hospitals are among the most consistent clients for private security firms, and Memphis’s healthcare systems are growing.
The Technology Pivot
The companies that will thrive in 2025 aren’t the ones with the most guards. They’re the ones figuring out how to pair guard services with technology that makes those guards more effective.
MPD’s Real Time Crime Center has been a model for how surveillance technology can supplement human resources. Private security firms are taking notice. Several Memphis-based companies have started offering integrated packages that combine on-site guards with remote video monitoring, license plate recognition at entry points, and AI-assisted anomaly detection on camera feeds.
This is where the industry is heading, and it’s creating a split. Large national firms like Allied Universal and Securitas have the capital to invest in technology platforms. Smaller local outfits, the kind that have been running guard services in Memphis for decades, are facing a choice: invest in tech or compete purely on price and relationships.
Neither path is wrong, necessarily. There’s still a market for a reliable guard company that picks up the phone on the first ring and has supervisors who actually visit the sites they manage. Plenty of Memphis property managers will tell you they’ve been burned by national companies that sell a polished proposal and then staff their sites with undertrained guards making $12 an hour.
Still, the technology piece can’t be ignored. Insurance companies are starting to ask about camera coverage and remote monitoring capabilities as part of their underwriting process. A property with a documented surveillance system and verified patrol logs is a different risk profile than one with a guard sitting in a car in the parking lot. That shift in how insurers evaluate risk will push more clients toward tech-enabled security solutions over the next 12 to 18 months.
What Could Go Wrong
A sustained crime decline is the best possible news for Memphis as a city. For the security industry, it introduces some uncertainty.
If crime continues to fall through 2025 at the same rate, some contract renewals will get harder. The apartment complex in Raleigh that hired overnight patrol after a shooting in 2023 might decide the money is better spent elsewhere if the neighborhood stays quiet for another year. The retail strip on Summer Avenue that brought in a uniformed presence after a rash of shoplifting could cut back.
These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They happen in every city that sees a meaningful crime reduction. The clients who hired out of fear are the first to leave when the fear subsides.
The smart play for security companies is to build relationships that go beyond crisis response. If the only reason a client keeps you is because they’re scared, you’ll lose them when they stop being scared. Companies that position themselves as operational partners (handling access management, incident documentation, liability reduction, and regulatory compliance) will retain clients regardless of what the crime numbers do.
There’s also a labor challenge that hasn’t gone away. Tennessee’s unemployment rate sat at 3.8% through most of 2024, and finding qualified security officers willing to work overnight shifts for $14 to $16 an hour remains difficult. The companies that figure out retention, whether through better pay, training programs, or scheduling flexibility, will have an advantage that crime statistics can’t touch.
Regulation Watch
One more thing worth tracking in 2025. The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees private security licensing through the Private Protective Services division, has been signaling a more active enforcement posture. TDCI conducted more compliance audits in 2024 than in either of the two preceding years, and several companies received administrative actions for operating with expired or improperly registered guard credentials.
This isn’t just a compliance headache. It’s a market differentiator. Companies that keep clean records, maintain proper training documentation, and ensure every officer carries a valid registration card can use that as a selling point. In a market where clients are becoming more sophisticated about what they’re buying, being able to say “every one of our people is fully licensed and audited” carries weight.
The 2025 Tennessee legislative session may also bring changes. There were rumblings in late 2024 about a bill to increase minimum training hours for armed security officers. Nothing has been filed yet, so this is speculation. If it happens, companies that already exceed the current minimums will have a head start.
The Bottom Line
Memphis’s security industry enters 2025 from a position that would have seemed unlikely two years ago. Crime is falling. Construction is booming. Logistics demand is steady. Technology is creating new revenue streams for companies willing to adapt.
The firms that treat 2025 like business as usual will probably be fine for another year. The ones that read the data and adjust, investing in technology, tightening their compliance, locking in construction contracts, building client relationships that survive a crime drop, are the ones that will still be growing in 2027.
Memphis earned a lot of bad headlines over the past five years. The city seems to be turning a corner. The security companies that turn with it will define the next chapter of this industry in the Mid-South.