Mike Rallings turned in his badge yesterday. After 31 years with the Memphis Police Department, the last five as director, he walked out of 201 Poplar for the final time on April 14. No fanfare. No retirement ceremony that made the news. Just a career cop leaving a department that looks very different from the one he joined in 1990.
His exit creates a vacancy at the top of MPD during the most violent stretch Memphis has seen in a generation. It also opens questions about how the city’s next police leader will handle the growing role that private security plays in keeping Memphis safe. Those questions deserve honest answers.
The Rallings Years
Rallings became interim director in 2016 under unusual circumstances. Toney Armstrong resigned after his ex-girlfriend was arrested for stalking. The department needed steady hands, and Rallings got the job. Mayor Strickland later removed the “interim” label and gave him the full appointment.
He inherited a department already struggling with staffing and morale. What he couldn’t have predicted was how much worse things would get. Memphis recorded 228 homicides in 2016, his first year. By 2020, that number had climbed to 332, a record that rattled the entire city. Violent crime spread beyond the traditionally high-crime corridors of North Memphis and Frayser into areas that had felt insulated, including parts of Hickory Hill, Raleigh, even stretches of East Memphis near Poplar and Perkins.
Rallings responded the way most police directors respond when violence escalates. He moved resources. He launched targeted operations in specific precincts. He stood in front of cameras after shootings and asked for the community’s help. Some of it worked. Much of it didn’t, at least not in any way that showed up in the annual crime statistics.
The staffing problem ate him alive. When Rallings took over, MPD had roughly 2,100 sworn officers. By the time he left, that number had dropped below 2,000 and was still falling. Officers retired. Others transferred to suburban departments in Collierville, Bartlett, and Germantown, where the pay wasn’t dramatically better but the caseload was lighter and the risks were lower. Younger officers looked at the pension math, the danger, and the public hostility toward policing that intensified in 2020, and they chose different careers entirely.
None of that is uniquely Rallings’s fault. Police departments across the country faced the same pressures. Memphis just felt it harder because the city was already short-staffed before the national reckoning over policing began.
The Criticism From All Sides
Rallings spent his final years getting hammered from every direction. Reform advocates in North Memphis and South Memphis argued he wasn’t doing enough to address the root causes of violence. They wanted more investment in community programs, mental health responders, and de-escalation training. Some called for his resignation after high-profile use-of-force incidents.
On the other side, business owners and residents in Midtown, East Memphis, and the suburbs wanted more visible policing. They saw the homicide numbers climbing and concluded that MPD wasn’t aggressive enough. City Council members publicly questioned whether the department was deploying officers effectively.
Rallings tried to walk a middle path and satisfied almost nobody. That’s the nature of running a police department in a city as divided as Memphis. The expectations from different communities are often contradictory, and the resources are never enough to meet any of them fully.
His defenders point out that he kept the department functioning through a pandemic, a national protest movement, and a staffing crisis that would have broken a lesser administrator. His critics say functioning isn’t the same as succeeding, and 332 homicides proves the point.
Both camps have evidence for their positions. The truth sits somewhere in the uncomfortable middle.
Where Private Security Filled the Gaps
Here’s the story that played out quietly while the political arguments raged. As MPD lost officers and stretched its remaining force thinner, private security companies picked up work that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier.
Commercial property owners along Poplar Avenue and in the Eastgate Shopping Center area started hiring armed guards for daytime shifts, well beyond the typical overnight shift. Churches in Whitehaven and Parkway Village brought in security teams for Sunday services. Apartment complexes that had relied on MPD drive-throughs as a deterrent began contracting for dedicated guard coverage.
The numbers tell the story. Tennessee’s Department of Commerce and Insurance processed a surge in new armed guard registration applications throughout 2019 and 2020. Security company license renewals in Shelby County ran ahead of statewide averages. The private security workforce in the Memphis metro area grew even as MPD’s sworn officer count shrank.
Several companies adapted quickly to the changing environment. Phelps Security, which has been operating in Memphis since 1960, expanded its commercial patrol operations across East Memphis and Germantown. Imperial Security added armed response capabilities that it hadn’t offered previously. National players like Allied Universal, fresh off its massive G4S acquisition, pushed aggressively into new Memphis accounts.
Smaller firms found openings too. Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company that’s been in business since 1998, picked up contracts with commercial properties and distribution centers by offering competitive pricing and statewide coverage across Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. Their operation at 2682 Lamar Avenue runs leaner than the nationals. You can reach them directly at (202) 222-2225 or through shieldofsteel.com. The tradeoff is that a smaller outfit like Shield of Steel doesn’t carry the name recognition of an Allied Universal or a Securitas, and their staffing bench is thinner when multiple clients need coverage simultaneously. For property managers who value a direct relationship with ownership and faster decision-making, that tradeoff often works. For organizations that need a vendor with 500 guards on standby, it might not.
The point is that the Rallings era forced the entire Memphis security industry to evolve. The line between public safety and private security blurred in ways that won’t reverse just because MPD gets a new director.
What Changes Now
The mayor’s office has been reviewing seven finalists for the director position. No announcement yet on who gets the job. That uncertainty creates a planning problem for every organization in Memphis that depends on MPD’s presence, directly or indirectly.
Consider the scenarios. A new director who pushes hard on recruitment and manages to stabilize MPD’s headcount at 2,000 officers would ease some of the pressure on private security demand. Response times might improve in precincts like Tillman and Appling Farms that have seen the worst degradation. Property owners who hired private guards as a stopgap might decide they don’t need the extra expense.
A director who prioritizes community policing and specialized units (homicide investigators, gang task forces, domestic violence teams) might actually pull more officers off general patrol. That could increase demand for private security in commercial districts even if overall crime numbers improve.
A director who comes from outside Memphis would face a learning curve measured in months, during which the department essentially runs on autopilot. That transition period could be the most volatile for the private security market, because uncertainty drives spending. Businesses don’t cut security budgets when they’re worried about what comes next.
The Relationship That Needs Fixing
One of the underreported failures of the Rallings era was the deterioration of coordination between MPD and private security companies. There’s no formal framework for information sharing. When MPD identifies a crime pattern, like a string of armed robberies targeting convenience stores along Elvis Presley Boulevard, that information doesn’t automatically flow to security companies guarding properties in the same corridor.
Some of this happens informally. Off-duty officers who work security gigs share intelligence with their private-sector colleagues. Individual precinct commanders sometimes reach out to security companies operating in their area. It’s ad hoc and personality-dependent, which means it breaks down whenever people change jobs or retire.
The next director has an opportunity to formalize this relationship. Cities like Atlanta, Houston, and Charlotte have built public-private security partnerships that include regular briefings, shared crime data, and coordinated patrol routes. Memphis hasn’t done this in any systematic way. Given how much the city now depends on private security to maintain basic safety in commercial areas, that gap needs to close.
The Numbers to Watch
Two data points will tell us more about the post-Rallings era than any press conference. First, MPD’s authorized strength versus actual strength. If the gap keeps widening, private security demand will keep growing regardless of who sits in the director’s chair. Second, response times by precinct. When average response times to Priority 1 calls exceed ten minutes in a given precinct, property owners in that area start making phone calls to security companies. That’s the trigger point. It’s been crossed in several precincts already.
Track those numbers. They’ll tell you where the business opportunities are before the new director’s first policy memo hits anyone’s desk.
What Rallings Leaves Behind
Mike Rallings wasn’t the worst police director Memphis has had, and he wasn’t the best. He was a career officer who got handed an impossible job during impossible times and did what he could with what he had. The homicide numbers on his watch are damning, but they reflect forces much larger than one person’s leadership.
What he leaves behind is a city that has fundamentally changed its relationship with private security. Five years ago, hiring a guard company felt like an admission that something had gone wrong. Today, it’s a standard line item in operating budgets across Memphis. That shift happened during Rallings’s tenure, driven by circumstances he couldn’t control.
The next director will inherit that reality. Whether they see private security as a partner, a competitor, or an afterthought will shape public safety in Memphis for years to come.
We’ll be watching. Memphis deserves someone who gets this right. Memphis deserves someone who gets this right.