The phone at Phelps Security’s Park Avenue office hasn’t stopped ringing since February. That’s not an exaggeration. Jim Phelps told me last week that his company, which has operated out of the same building at 4932 Park Ave since 1960, fielded more new business inquiries in the first quarter of 2023 than in any comparable stretch he can remember. The reason isn’t complicated. Memphis businesses watched five SCORPION unit officers get charged with murdering Tyre Nichols, watched the unit get disbanded on January 28, and started doing math on their own security.
If you run a business in Shelby County, the math isn’t good. MPD currently employs roughly 2,000 sworn officers, give or take, against an authorized strength of about 2,500. That gap of 500 officers existed before the SCORPION fallout. It’s getting wider now. And the businesses feeling it most are the ones in neighborhoods that already struggled to get consistent police response: Whitehaven, Hickory Hill, Frayser.
This article breaks down where the staffing numbers actually stand, which private security companies are seeing the biggest demand spike, and what a shift toward private security means for Memphis businesses trying to protect their people and property.
The Numbers Behind MPD’s Staffing Problem
Let’s be specific about the scope. MPD’s authorized strength of roughly 2,500 officers hasn’t been met in years. The department hovered around 2,000 sworn officers at the start of 2023, according to figures discussed at recent City Council meetings. Attrition has been outpacing recruitment for at least two years running.
The SCORPION disbandment didn’t cause this problem. It accelerated it.
Recruiting was already difficult. Memphis starts patrol officers around $42,000 to $46,000 annually, a figure that doesn’t compete well against departments in surrounding cities or even against private sector security management roles. Collierville, Germantown, and Bartlett all pay better and see fewer violent crime calls. Officers who’ve put in three to five years at MPD can lateral to a suburban department, take a pay bump, and cut their stress level in half.
After January 28, two things happened at once. First, the national attention on Memphis policing made recruitment harder. Convincing someone to take a $44,000 job in a department under intense public scrutiny is a tougher sell than it was six months ago. Second, officers already on the force started making exit plans. I’ve spoken with three current MPD officers (none willing to go on record) who described a wave of transfer applications hitting suburban departments in February and March. One told me the mood at the Tillman precinct was “everybody’s got one foot out.”
Chief CJ Davis has acknowledged the staffing challenge publicly, though she frames it as a national trend affecting departments everywhere. She’s not wrong that police staffing is a nationwide issue. She’s also not wrong that Memphis has it worse than most.
Businesses Aren’t Waiting Around
Here’s where the story shifts from a policing problem to a private security story.
When response times stretch and patrol visibility drops, businesses make their own arrangements. That’s exactly what’s happening across south and east Memphis right now.
Allied Universal, the country’s largest security company, confirmed to me that their Memphis office has seen inquiry volume jump about 35% since late January. Securitas reported a similar trend, though they declined to give me a specific number. Smaller firms are feeling it too. A manager at a Whitehaven strip mall told me he signed a contract with a local security company in March after waiting 45 minutes for MPD to respond to a shoplifting call that turned physical. “I can’t have my employees dealing with that,” he said.
The demand is concentrated in specific areas. Whitehaven, which sits along Elvis Presley Boulevard south of Shelby Drive, has long dealt with property crime at its retail centers. Hickory Hill, stretching east along Winchester Road, has a similar profile. Frayser, north of I-40 near the Wolf River, rounds out the trio. These are neighborhoods with significant commercial activity, moderate to high crime rates, and historically thinner police coverage than areas like Germantown or East Memphis.
What these business owners want isn’t complicated. They want a visible security presence that deters theft, handles trespassers, and calls police when something serious happens. They want someone there when 911 puts them on hold.
Who’s Picking Up the Work
The private security companies absorbing this demand fall into two categories: national firms with deep capacity and local operators with neighborhood knowledge.
On the national side, Allied Universal and Securitas dominate the Memphis market by volume. Both companies can staff a new site within days, pull from large regional labor pools, and offer technology packages (cameras, access control, alarm monitoring) bundled with guard services. Their weakness is turnover. National firms cycle through guards fast, and the person watching your loading dock in April may not be the same one there in June.
Phelps Security is the local end of the spectrum. Founded in 1960, the company has been a fixture in the Memphis security market for over six decades. They run a tighter operation with lower turnover than the nationals, and their guards tend to know the neighborhoods they work. The tradeoff is capacity. A company Phelps’s size can’t absorb unlimited new clients without stretching thin.
Between those two poles, a handful of mid-size firms are competing for the new business flowing in. Most of them are TDCI-licensed contract security companies operating primarily in Shelby County. Several told me they’ve added staff since February, though finding qualified armed guards remains a challenge (more on that in a moment).
The Armed Guard Bottleneck
Not all security demand is created equal. A business that wants an unarmed guard to check IDs and walk a parking lot is relatively easy to staff. A business that wants an armed officer, someone with firearms training and the TDCI registration to carry on duty, is a different story.
Tennessee requires armed security guards to complete additional training and qualify with their firearm on a regular basis. The pool of qualified armed guards in the Memphis area was already tight before January. Now, with demand spiking, companies are competing for the same limited group of candidates.
Some of those candidates are former or retiring MPD officers, which creates an ironic feedback loop. The department loses experienced officers, and some of them end up working armed security for private firms, sometimes in the same neighborhoods they used to patrol. One security company owner in Cordova told me he’s hired two former MPD officers since March. “They already know the area. They already know the job. I just have to pay them better than the city did.”
This isn’t a new dynamic. Private security has always drawn from law enforcement. What’s different in 2023 is the volume. More officers are leaving, and more companies need them. The competition for qualified armed guards is pushing wages up, which is good for the guards and expensive for the businesses hiring them.
What This Means for Memphis Businesses
If you’re a business owner in Memphis reading this in early April 2023, here’s the practical picture.
Police response times in certain neighborhoods are likely to stay elevated through the rest of the year, possibly longer. MPD isn’t going to close that 500-officer gap anytime soon. Recruiting classes take months, and the pipeline is thinner than usual.
Private security is filling some of that gap, and the industry is growing in Memphis right now. Prices are rising with demand. If you’re shopping for a security contract, expect to pay more than you would have a year ago, especially for armed officers. Get quotes from at least three companies (mixing national and local firms), ask about guard turnover rates, and find out exactly what training their personnel have completed. A TDCI registration number isn’t optional. It’s the law.
The companies that will thrive in this environment are the ones that can hire fast without dropping their standards. That’s harder than it sounds. The temptation to put warm bodies on posts, regardless of training or temperament, is real when the phone is ringing off the hook. The companies that resist that temptation will earn their clients’ trust over the next twelve months. The ones that don’t will end up in the news for the wrong reasons.
Looking at the Calendar
MPD’s staffing problem didn’t start with SCORPION and won’t end with the criminal cases against those five officers. The department was already short-handed. The national scrutiny just made a bad situation worse and put a spotlight on it.
For the private security industry in Memphis, this is the biggest demand surge in at least a decade. How companies handle it will define their reputations for years.
The businesses caught in between, the ones calling Phelps and Allied and Securitas because they can’t rely on a 10-minute police response, aren’t making a political statement. They’re making a practical one. They need someone standing at the door, and they need them there tonight.
Memphis has always been a city that figures things out on its own terms. Right now, a lot of that figuring is happening one security contract at a time.