Tennessee Lawmakers Question Memphis Police Data Showing Crime Hit a 25-Year Low

Days before President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard to Memphis to deal with “tremendous levels of violent crime,” the city’s police department said that crime was at a 25-year low in the city.

While crime has improved in the city in recent months, Memphis remains one of the most crime-ridden big cities in the United States, trailing only Chicago and Houston in total homicides last year.

In the meantime, two Chicago lawmakers have requested an audit of police statistics in that city in response to a whistleblower who claimed that personnel have been pressured to reclassify some crimes.

Trump, before issuing his Sept. 15 memorandum, said the city’s recent improvement in crime statistics should be attributed to his administration’s involvement, which began five months ago.

“The only reason crime is somewhat down in Memphis is because the FBI, and others in the Federal Government, at my direction, have been working there for 5 months – on the absolutely terrible Crime numbers,” Trump said in a Sept. 13 post on his Truth Social account.

Questions From State Lawmakers

One longtime member of the civic government in and around Memphis, state Sen. Brent Taylor, remains highly skeptical that there has been substantial progress on crime in the city. In August, he sent a letter to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation requesting an audit of the Memphis Police Department’s crime reporting practices.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Taylor, who is a former member of Memphis’s City Council and the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, said he received an anonymous tip from a member of the Memphis Police Department indicating that the whistleblower had “been pressured to reclassify some of the crimes” that were submitted into the state’s statistics tracking service, the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System.

The Aug. 15 letter signed by Taylor, who now represents Shelby County in the Tennessee General Assembly’s Senate, and state Rep. John Gillespie, who represents a Tennessee House district in East Memphis, said those reclassifications included intentionally downgrading felonies to misdemeanors and taking actions to prevent incidents from appearing in “official crime statistics.”

“If such practices are indeed occurring, the result is the suppression or distortion of crime statistics, undermining both public trust and the ability of law enforcement agencies to accurately assess and respond to criminal activity,” the letter said.

Representatives of the Memphis Police Department did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time. However, in a statement distributed to local media, Police Chief CJ Davis said the department “does not and will not manipulate crime data.”

“Every incident is classified using statewide and national definitions, subject to review and ongoing outside audits by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation,” Davis said in a statement distributed on Aug. 27. “There is no ‘systematic downgrading of crimes,’ our goal is not to produce ‘good numbers.’ Our goal is to reduce crime, build safer neighborhoods, and give the public the truth.”

Taylor said he recently met with Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch and received assurances that the Memphis Police Department was due for an audit soon. However, he was told that there is always some reclassification of certain incidents as they may not fit into certain predefined categories.

Representatives of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time.

Still, Taylor said in spite of a recent, slight improvement in the crime situation due to a joint effort among local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, things in Memphis have not changed for the better in the new millennium.

“Today, there’s nowhere safe in Memphis during the day,” Taylor told The Epoch Times.

Independent Statistics

Although crime statistics generally reflect a decline in overall offenses in Memphis, the city is dealing with a consistently high homicide rate. Last year, only Chicago and Houston, the third- and fourth-largest cities in the United States, counted more homicides.

According to statistics released by the Memphis Police Department in September, the cumulative number of criminal offenses—which was not specified in the reporting—dropped to less than 30,000 incidents in 2025 from more than 40,000 incidents in 2001.

The same reporting indicated that murder and aggravated assault rose during that period, but sexual assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft have all fallen.

According to statistics from a separate local organization, major violent crime was higher in the first half of 2025 than during the same time in 2011. The Memphis Shelby Crime Commission said in its mid-year report published in July that “reported major violent crime” between January and June of 2025 had risen to 6,565 total offenses from 5,162 in the same period in 2011. Those figures come from the preliminary crime data released by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

However, the commission report said that reported overall crime had dropped to 47,471 total offenses in the first half of 2025 from 55,052 offenses in the first half of 2011.

Representatives of the commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

In the past 10 years, according to data published by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the violent crime situation has deteriorated in some areas and improved in others.

Between 2014 and 2024, big-city homicide has increased by about 81 percent, and aggravated assault has increased by about 56 percent. During the same time period, robbery has declined by 34 percent, while rape has decreased by about 9 percent.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association is a professional organization of police executives representing the largest cities in the United States and Canada.

In 2024, according to the statistics collected by the Major Cities Chiefs Association from responding agencies, Memphis trailed only Chicago and Houston in terms of total homicides. Memphis reported 287 homicides, more than the 284 in Los Angeles the same year.

In a report published on Sept. 12, the Council on Criminal Justice said that based on crime statistics collected through the middle of 2025, the “homicide rate in Memphis is among the highest in the study sample and is dropping slower than it is in other large cities.”

“Homicides for the first half of 2025 were 58 percent higher than the first half of 2019, and motor vehicle theft levels were double what they were in the first six months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2019,” the report said. “In contrast, reported carjacking and robbery incidents were 45 percent and 23 percent lower over this timeframe.”

The stubbornly high number of violent crimes, Taylor said, is “driving people out of Memphis.”

“I think most people don’t think that they’re going to be murdered, right? But they do think they’re going to be a victim of property crime,” Taylor said. “That’s why people in East Memphis don’t want to go downtown … because they’re afraid their car is going to be broken into, or that their home is going to be burglarized while they’re gone.”

The end effect for the city, Taylor said, is that middle-class residents are moving away. This leaves behind only those who cannot afford to leave Memphis and those who can afford to maintain private security forces.

“A 25-year low? I can only tell you, my constituents that I hear from daily, they don’t believe it,” Taylor said.