Memphis National Guard Deployment Stirs Debate

As President Donald Trump moves to send the National Guard and federal agents into Memphis to help strengthen security, state and city officials in Tennessee are sharply divided over the role the federal government should play in municipal law enforcement.

The city ranked first among all major U.S. cities in 2024, in both per capita violent crime and property crime, according to an August analysis of FBI data.

Last year, the violent crime rate was about six times greater than the national average.

In addition to sending in the National Guard, Trump’s Sept. 15 memorandum will create a multiagency task force that includes the Pentagon, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the attorney general; the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

Many state officials welcomed the move.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee wrote on X, “Our goal is to accelerate the positive momentum of Operation Viper—an ongoing FBI mission in Memphis with a dedicated task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement that has already arrested hundreds of the most violent offenders.”

The operation includes the deployment of 100 highway patrol officers into Memphis to help local police. 

Memphis police reported a spike in violent crime starting in 2020 and peaking in 2023, although the city’s murder rate began accelerating in 2018. 

State Rep. Mark White, who represents the district where Memphis is located, told The Epoch Times a shortage of police officers has contributed to the problem.

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic made it worse.

“With the pandemic, many of the children did not return to school,” he said. “We had too much chronic absenteeism, and that put a lot of young people on the streets, and they got involved in criminal activities.”

However, Memphis city officials say they have been making progress in reducing violence and question whether using military troops is the solution.

In response to Trump’s memorandum, J. Ford Canale, chairman of the Memphis City Council, said in a video posted on social media on Sept. 15: “Today, we face a decision that weighs heavily on our city and our people.”

“For many Memphians, the very mention of the National Guard recalls painful memories from 1968,” Canale said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, calling the deployment of the National Guard “at best, a short-term measure.”

The National Guard was sent to Memphis in 1968 to quell unrest following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. 

City officials now say the National Guard is a poor choice when the problem is not riots but everyday policing. 

“They don’t really have crime-fighting capacity; they know nothing about and are not trained regarding community policing, so how is this beneficial to the people of Memphis?” City Councilman JB Smiley told The Epoch Times.

“If the goal is to reduce crime, what happens when they leave after two weeks or three weeks?”

On Sept. 9, Memphis police reported “historic crime reductions,” with decreases across all major categories of crime during the first eight months of 2025.

Overall crime, robbery, burglary, and larceny were at 25-year lows, according to the department, with murder at a six-year low, aggravated assault at a five-year low, and sexual assault at a 20-year low.

—Kevin Stocklin; Stacy Robinson

BOOKMARKS

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—Stacy Robinson