The National Guard and law enforcement officers have overwhelmingly benefited people in Memphis.
A few days ago, I was driving through downtown Memphis to go to dinner with my wife when we passed a group of National Guard soldiers out on patrol. This has become an altogether frequent and welcome sight here in Bluff City, and the Guard’s positive effect has been widely felt.
There’s been a lot of national discussion and commentary about the presence of soldiers in our city, but the truth is clear for those here on the ground. Walk around Memphis today and the community feels transformed.
It wasn’t long ago that Memphis had the worst violent crime rate in the entire nation. In 2023 alone, the city had almost 400 homicides, a rate of approximately 41 killed in 100,000. Shockingly, the city of Memphis was rivaling Ecuador and Jamaica that year, which had two of the highest homicide rates in the world at 45.7 and 49.4, respectively. Some tried to dismiss just how bad things had gotten in Memphis, but those startling numbers firmly prove how dire the situation had become. The city was posting the crime rates of a third-world country, not something that should be expected of a successful American metropolitan center.
If that wasn’t a crisis, it’s hard to imagine what would be.
The fact is that society can only thrive when order is guaranteed. If basic protections crumble, then the liberties that one should be able to enjoy in a first-world country fall apart as well. Safety decays and business follows. For that reason, certain parts of the city seem to be little more than graveyards of hollowed-out buildings and warehouses that harken back to an age when the city’s future seemed golden and guaranteed.
Talk to the average person in Memphis, and he’s happy about the presence of the Guard. Around the suburbs, more community members feel comfortable travelling in and around the city again.
The surge of federal law enforcement hasn’t just meant high-profile arrests. The surge has also empowered Memphis police to do the much-needed routine police work that makes a city thrive. This is the ripple effect that the presence of federal law enforcement has ultimately had. With federal officers helping to take on large roles across the city, you see more local police doing the much-needed routine work that helps to keep any city safe. You see more cars out on patrol. You see more reckless highway speeders pulled over. You see faster response times to incidents in the community.