Every February, we pull back and look at the full picture. Not the individual incidents that filled the news cycle week by week, but the aggregate numbers that tell us where Memphis stands in its fight against crime. This is our annual crime statistics review, and the 2019 data paints a picture that’s complicated, occasionally encouraging, and mostly sobering.
The headline number: 191 homicides in the city of Memphis. That’s up from 186 in 2018 and 180 in 2017. Three straight years of increases. If you include Shelby County’s unincorporated areas, the total edges higher. The county sheriff’s office investigated an additional 10 homicides, also up from the prior year.
For a city of roughly 650,000 people, 191 homicides puts Memphis’s per-capita murder rate among the highest of any major city in the country. It’s a number that MPD Director Michael Rallings has addressed publicly multiple times, pointing consistently to the proliferation of firearms and the cycle of repeat offenders passing through an overburdened court system.
Violent Crime: The Full Breakdown
Homicide gets the headlines, but it’s not the full story. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report categories break violent crime into four components: murder, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape. Looking at all four gives a more complete picture of what 2019 looked like.
Aggravated assaults in Memphis remained elevated throughout 2019. The numbers tracked closely with the homicide pattern. Many aggravated assaults are essentially attempted homicides where the victim survived, often due to medical intervention at Regional One Health Center or Methodist Le Bonheur. The distinction between a homicide and an aggravated assault frequently comes down to how quickly the ambulance arrived and how close the bullet landed to something vital.
Robbery numbers in 2019 showed some movement. Armed robberies of businesses remained a persistent problem, particularly along the commercial corridors on Summer Avenue, Jackson Avenue, and in parts of South Memphis. Convenience stores and gas stations bore the brunt, as they have for years. Carjacking, while not tracked as a separate UCR category, continued to draw attention from MPD’s specialized units.
Rape and sexual assault reporting is always difficult to analyze because the reported numbers substantially undercount the actual incidents. TDCI estimates and victim advocacy organizations suggest that the majority of sexual assaults in Memphis go unreported. What the data does show is that the cases MPD investigated held roughly steady compared to 2018. Director Rallings pointed to the cleared backlog of sexual assault evidence kits as a positive development, one that was years overdue.
Property Crime: Where the Numbers Tell a Different Story
While violent crime numbers trended upward, property crime in Memphis presented a more mixed picture in 2019. Total reported property crime, which includes burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson, was roughly flat or slightly down compared to 2018 in aggregate terms.
That aggregate number masks significant variation by crime type and geography.
Auto theft, as we’ve reported, ran hot. Shelby County’s vehicle theft rate per capita is among the worst in the nation, and 2019 did nothing to change that. The Hickory Hill precinct, the Whitehaven area, and parts of Raleigh and Frayser continued to report the highest raw numbers. MPD’s Auto Theft Unit and the regional task force recovered thousands of stolen vehicles, but the recovery rate doesn’t undo the disruption and cost to victims.
Burglary showed some declines in certain areas. East Memphis and the Germantown border areas saw fewer residential break-ins compared to the prior two years, though the Cordova area picked up some of the volume. Commercial burglary remained steady, with construction sites and vacant commercial properties being frequent targets.
Larceny-theft, the broadest category, captures everything from shoplifting to package theft to someone swiping tools from an unlocked truck. Organized retail theft, which we covered earlier this month, is driving a growing share of the larceny numbers, though the UCR categories don’t break it out separately.
Geographic Patterns
Crime in Memphis doesn’t distribute evenly, and the 2019 data reinforced patterns that have been visible for years.
The highest concentrations of violent crime tracked along a familiar geography: the north-south corridor from Frayser through North Memphis, through the Midtown-to-Orange Mound belt, and down through Whitehaven to the Shelby County line. The eastern half of the city, from East Memphis through Germantown and into Cordova, maintained lower violent crime rates, though they weren’t immune.
Within the high-crime areas, the variations were granular. Certain blocks in Binghampton were significantly more dangerous than blocks two streets over. Parts of South Memphis along Kansas Street and Mississippi Boulevard saw clusters of incidents that didn’t extend across major intersections. Crime mapping data from MPD and the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission showed tight geographic concentrations that suggest hyper-local dynamics at work.
For security companies and property managers, these geographic patterns are operationally significant. A business on Park Avenue near the University of Memphis faces a different threat environment than a business on Park Avenue near Highland Street, even though they share the same road name. Understanding the micro-geography of crime in Memphis is what separates an effective security plan from a generic one.
MPD Staffing and Resources
The elephant in the room throughout 2019 was MPD staffing. Director Rallings has been public about the department’s need for more officers. At various points during the year, the department operated with an authorized strength around 2,000 sworn officers, well below the 2,500 that Rallings has identified as the department’s actual need.
Recruiting has been a challenge for police departments nationwide, and Memphis is no exception. The combination of demanding work, public scrutiny, competitive pay from other employers, and the general difficulty of policing a high-crime city makes filling positions an ongoing struggle.
For the private security industry, MPD’s staffing gap has been a double-edged sword. On one side, it creates market opportunity. Businesses that can’t rely on rapid police response are more likely to hire private security. Property owners who want a visible security presence beyond what MPD can provide turn to contract security companies.
On the other side, it creates a competitive hiring pool. MPD and private security companies are fishing from some of the same talent. A candidate who qualifies for a police officer position might choose MPD for the benefits and pension, taking them out of the private security pipeline. Alternatively, a candidate who can’t or won’t navigate the police academy might find private security a more accessible career path.
The Court System Factor
Rallings and other law enforcement leaders in Memphis have been vocal about what they see as a revolving door in the courts. Defendants arrested for violent crimes posting bond and being released, sometimes within days, only to reoffend. The specific cases that illustrate this pattern are numerous enough that they’ve become a recurring theme in city council meetings and in the local press.
The debate over bail reform, sentencing guidelines, and prosecutorial priorities is complex and politically charged. What’s relevant for the security industry is the practical outcome: individuals with violent criminal histories cycling through the system and returning to the neighborhoods where their original offenses occurred. For security companies providing patrol services in those neighborhoods, it means the threat environment resets faster than the justice system can process it.
What These Numbers Mean for 2020
If you’re reading this data and looking for a reason to be optimistic about 2020, you’ll need to squint. The trend lines on violent crime are moving the wrong direction. Property crime is holding steady rather than declining. The police department is understaffed. The court system is strained.
What you can take from the data is clarity. The numbers tell you where the risks are concentrated, what types of crime are growing, and where the gaps in public safety are widest. For business owners, property managers, and security professionals, that clarity is actionable.
Invest in security where the data says you need it. Don’t spend money guarding against risks that aren’t present at your specific location. Check the crime data for your precinct, your zip code, your block. Match your security investment to your actual exposure.
Memphis recorded 191 homicides in 2019. Each one was a person with a family, a history, and a community that absorbed the loss. The numbers in this review are clinical by necessity, but the reality behind them is anything but clinical. The question facing Memphis as we move deeper into 2020 is whether those numbers will get better, worse, or stay exactly where they are.
History says they’ll stay about where they are. I’m hoping history is wrong this year.