Fact Check: Crime in Memphis Was Falling Way Before Trump’s Task Force Showed Up

President Donald Trump is taking credit for a dramatic decline in crime in Memphis, pointing to a roughly 36% drop since the federal Memphis Safe Task Force arrived one year ago. But the timeline tells a more complicated story.

Crime in Memphis was already falling substantially before Trump sent in the task force.

According to the Memphis Police Department’s own 2024 annual report, overall crime fell 13% from 2023, while homicides dropped 30%, robberies fell 22%, and motor-vehicle theft declined by nearly 40%. The University of Memphis Public Safety Institute and Memphis Shelby Crime Commission also reported significant declines in violent crime during 2024.

That downward trend was well underway in 2025.

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A City of Memphis public-safety update covering the period before the federal task force arrived showed murders down from 201 to 156, aggravated assaults down from 5,826 to 4,746, robberies down from 1,610 to 1,266, and motor-vehicle thefts down from 7,956 to 4,956.

Local leaders, like gubernatorial candidate and City Councilwoman Jerri Green, have credited established city policing and violence-intervention efforts.

“We hear, ‘Well, of course crime’s down, all of the Task Force is there,’ and I say, ‘Well, actually MPD is doing a really great job, and we’ve put some other things in, like youth mental health and violence intervention,’” Green said in June, according to WREG.

By the end of 2025, Memphis Police reported another substantial decline: overall Part I crime was down 27%, murders were down 26%, aggravated assaults fell 22%, and robberies declined 31%. Compared with 2023, MPD said overall crime was down 41% and murders were down 47%.

Those numbers demonstrate that crime continued to decline after the Trump administration’s intervention. But they do not show that Trump’s task force explicitly caused the decline.

“One year later, the results are undeniable — and the city is being reclaimed from the violent crime and chaos that once plagued its residents,” a Sept. 15 statement from the Trump administration read.

But to make that claim, you would need evidence isolating the task force’s impact from the policies, policing strategies and broader trends already driving crime downward – which is not available.

The task force can, however, legitimately point to arrests, gun seizures and other enforcement activity. But arrests and confiscated weapons are measures of police activity, not proof that those actions produced the city’s overall crime decline.

There is also a larger question about what kind of public-safety strategy Memphis should pursue.

Action News 5 reported that city leaders are concerned about a lack of communication about the operation’s duration, while some residents question its impact and point to deadly task-force shootings. Many pointed to recent shootings involving residents and task force members – notably Alfonzo Ivy, who was shot and killed during an attempted warrant arrest.

Heavy enforcement, like Trump’s task force, can produce arrests and short-term disruption, but policing alone does not address the underlying conditions associated with violence. Memphis was already pursuing targeted policing, violence-intervention efforts, technology, repeat-offender strategies and community partnerships before the federal intervention.

For now, it remains unclear how long the task force will stay in Memphis. The Trump administration points to falling crime as evidence its approach is working. But on the ground, the federal officers have become a familiar part of daily life– leaving residents to wonder what comes next when their presence eventually ends.