I drove through Hickory Hill last Tuesday evening, right around dusk. A woman was loading groceries into her SUV at the Kroger on Winchester Road. She kept her head on a swivel the entire time, scanning the parking lot between every bag. When she finished, she practically jogged to the driver’s side door.
That scene tells you more about property crime in Memphis right now than any statistic could.
The Numbers Say One Thing
Fox13 Memphis reported on January 31 that auto theft in the city dropped in late 2023. The decline was real. Memphis consistently ranked among the worst cities in the country for stolen cars, and the trend line finally bent downward.
Part of the credit goes to Hyundai and Kia. The so-called “Kia Boys” trend, fueled by viral social media videos showing how easily certain models could be hotwired with a USB cable, had turned those brands into rolling targets. Nationwide, Hyundai and Kia thefts surged through 2022 and into 2023. Both manufacturers eventually rolled out software updates and engine immobilizers. Local dealerships in Memphis started offering free installations. MPD ran awareness campaigns. The combination worked, at least for that specific category.
So auto theft went down. Good news, right?
The Street Tells a Different Story
Talk to anyone living in Cordova or Bartlett and they’ll give you a very different read on the situation. Property crime hasn’t gone away. It’s shifted.
Burglaries remain stubbornly high across Shelby County. Larceny (everything from package theft to shoplifting to someone grabbing your laptop out of your car) is still elevated well above pre-pandemic levels. Aggravated assault, while technically a violent crime, often accompanies property crime when a confrontation happens during a theft or break-in. Those numbers haven’t budged much either.
The suburbs are feeling it in ways they didn’t five years ago. Cordova, which used to feel insulated from the crime patterns that defined neighborhoods closer to downtown, has seen a steady increase in residential break-ins. Bartlett residents I’ve spoken with describe a creeping anxiety. Cars rifled through overnight. Packages disappearing from porches. Ring doorbell footage shared in neighborhood Facebook groups showing strangers checking door handles at 3 a.m.
“We moved out here to get away from all that,” one Bartlett homeowner told me. He didn’t want his name used. “Now it feels like it followed us.”
Catalytic Converters: The Crime That Won’t Quit
If there’s one property crime that defines early 2024 in Memphis, it’s catalytic converter theft. These emissions-control devices sit underneath your vehicle and contain precious metals like platinum, palladium, and rhodium that fetch good money at scrap yards. A thief with a battery-powered reciprocating saw can remove one in under two minutes.
Toyota Tacomas and Tundras are prime targets. So are Honda Accords and any vehicle that sits high enough off the ground to slide underneath without a jack. Church parking lots on Sunday mornings have become hunting grounds. Hospital employee lots during shift changes. Apartment complexes where cars sit unattended for hours.
The Hickory Hill area has been hit especially hard. One mechanic on Mount Moriah Road told me he’s replacing two or three catalytic converters a week, sometimes more. Each replacement runs the vehicle owner anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 depending on the make and model.
Tennessee passed a law in 2022 requiring scrap metal dealers to keep records of catalytic converter purchases and pay by check rather than cash. The intent was to create a paper trail. In practice, the stolen converters often move through informal channels or cross state lines into Mississippi and Arkansas, where enforcement varies.
Retail Theft and the Mall Problem
Wolfchase Galleria and Oak Court Mall have both dealt with persistent retail theft issues. National retailers at Wolfchase have increased their loss prevention staffing. Some stores have locked up merchandise that used to sit on open shelves. It’s a visible sign of the problem, and every shopper notices.
Oak Court, smaller and quieter by comparison, has seen organized groups target specific stores. The thieves work in teams. Two or three people enter together, grab armfuls of merchandise, and leave before staff can respond. The whole thing takes maybe ninety seconds.
Mall security at both locations has ramped up patrols. Wolfchase added visible security presence near anchor store entrances and in the parking structure. Oak Court brought in off-duty officers for weekend shifts. These measures help, and they’ve reduced some of the brazen daytime incidents. They haven’t eliminated the problem.
Smaller retail strips along Poplar Avenue and in the Germantown Parkway corridor are dealing with their own versions of the same issue. Smash-and-grab burglaries at cell phone stores. Organized shoplifting at big-box retailers. Package theft from loading docks.
Why the Disconnect?
So auto theft drops and people still don’t feel safer. Why?
The simplest explanation is that auto theft was never the crime most Memphians experienced personally. It was dramatic, it made the news, and it drove terrible national headlines for the city. But the crimes that grind people down day after day are different. It’s the broken car window. The stolen Amazon package. The catalytic converter ripped off in the middle of the night. The constant low-level awareness that your stuff isn’t safe.
Property crime is cumulative. Each individual incident might be “minor” in the eyes of the criminal justice system. A broken car window is a misdemeanor. A stolen package might not even generate a police report. But stack them up over months and years, and they erode a community’s sense of security in ways that are hard to measure with statistics.
There’s also a trust issue. When property crime victims do file reports, many describe a sense that nothing will come of it. MPD is stretched thin. Detectives carry enormous caseloads. Property crimes, unless they involve significant dollar amounts or violence, often don’t receive the investigative attention that victims hope for. People stop reporting. The numbers look better on paper. The reality on the ground stays the same.
What Security Companies Are Doing
Private security firms in Memphis have responded to the property crime surge in specific, practical ways.
Patrol services have shifted their emphasis. Rather than running standard routes on fixed schedules, several companies now concentrate on parking lots and retail corridors during peak theft hours. The visible presence of a marked patrol vehicle circling a shopping center parking lot at closing time acts as a deterrent, even if it can’t prevent every incident.
Camera systems have become the fastest-growing segment of the local security market. Commercial properties that once relied on a handful of analog cameras are upgrading to high-definition systems with remote monitoring. Some systems use motion-triggered alerts that notify a monitoring center in real time. A security operator watching a live feed can dispatch a response or activate an audible alarm within seconds of detecting suspicious activity.
Parking lot security, specifically, has become its own niche. Apartment complexes in Hickory Hill and Raleigh have started contracting dedicated overnight parking lot patrols after repeated catalytic converter thefts. A few property management companies told me the cost of the security contract is less than what they were paying to help tenants with converter replacements and handle the resulting turnover from frustrated residents.
Residential security consultations are up as well. Homeowners in Cordova and Bartlett who never considered a security system before are now calling for assessments. Motion-activated lighting, video doorbells, and monitored alarm systems are the most common requests. Some neighborhoods have pooled resources for private patrol services that supplement the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office presence.
The Bigger Picture
Memphis has a complicated relationship with its crime data. Every positive trend comes with caveats. Every decline in one category seems offset by persistence or growth in another. Auto theft going down is genuinely good. The people who work in law enforcement and auto theft prevention deserve credit for that progress.
But telling a Hickory Hill resident that auto theft declined while her catalytic converter is being sawed off at 2 a.m. doesn’t land the way anyone hopes. Telling a Cordova homeowner that the statistics improved while he’s filing his third police report of the year for a car break-in rings hollow.
The property crime picture in early 2024 is mixed. Some indicators move in the right direction. The lived experience of Memphians dealing with theft, burglary, and vandalism hasn’t caught up to the optimistic headlines. Until it does, the woman in the Kroger parking lot will keep looking over her shoulder.
And honestly, who can blame her?