Memphis Safe Task Force marks one year as autopsy, regression analysis contest effectiveness claims

Summary

The Memphis Safe Task Force completed one year of operation with homicide data, an independent regression analysis, and a contested autopsy forming three documented lines of evidence that the deployment’s claimed crime-reduction effectiveness does not survive scrutiny.
Memphis recorded a 26% decrease in murders from 2024 to 2025 — before the task force deployed — establishing a baseline against which any deployment-specific effect must be measured and that the deployment-causation explanation fails to account for.
The Center for American Progress applied statistical regression across multiple data sources and time windows and concluded there is no compelling evidence that deployments in Memphis, New Orleans, or Washington, D.C., reduced homicides, violent crime, or gun violence.
The Fourth of July shooting of Tyrin Johnson, with an autopsy finding he was shot in the back, contradicts the task force’s characterization of soldiers as chasing an armed robbery suspect.

The Memphis Safe Task Force, formed one year ago from a federal surge of law enforcement agents and 1,500 Tennessee National Guard members deployed at President Donald Trump’s direction, marked its first anniversary this week as three documented lines of evidence ran against the deployment’s claimed effectiveness: a 26% drop in murders that began before the task force deployed, a Center for American Progress regression analysis finding no statistically measurable impact from the deployment on violent crime, and an autopsy in the Fourth of July shooting of Tyrin Johnson. Brady McCarron, a U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson who fields media requests for the task force, characterized the task force as “very successful” and cited Memphis Police Department statistics showing “overall crime in Memphis is down significantly, dropping nearly 36% year-to-date in 2026 compared to the previous year.” The civic and political costs of the deployment are now surfacing through more than 50 Memphis businesses refusing service to troops in a “buy-cott,” a city council whose composition has shifted toward receptivity to resistance since the surge began, and a documented community-organizer position that one of the four men killed by federal agents would still be alive without the deployment.

The crime-reduction causal question

The task force claims credit for substantial reductions in violent crime. McCarron reported specific figures: the city is on pace for 135 murders in 2026, compared with 184 in 2025 and 249 in 2024 — figures that, taken together, indicate a roughly 46% decline from the 2024 baseline; a year to the day from the start of the task force, Memphis recorded 96 murders versus 149 the prior year; murders in the city’s second quarter decreased by 60% year over year. Memphis is on track for the lowest homicide rate in decades.

The Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, advanced a competing analytical claim. The CAP report, which also examined deployments in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., described the operations as a “political charade” and concluded: “Despite multiple tests using multiple data sources, measures, and windows of time, there is no compelling evidence that these deployments reduced homicides, violent crime, or gun violence.” The report’s further characterization — “The findings of this analysis confirm what many already suspected: At the time of the administration’s federal law enforcement and National Guard deployments, the primary goal was never to stop crime” — is the report’s own framing of its statistical findings. The Guardian’s separate analysis of police data found a 26% decrease in murders from 2024 to 2025, before the task force was deployed, supplying the pre-deployment baseline against which any deployment-specific effect must be measured.

President Trump responded to the CAP report by threatening a $5 billion personal defamation lawsuit against its authors unless they retracted the report and issued an apology.

The early-deployment trajectory observed by CAP — “a brief initial decrease in violence when National Guard troops began patrolling” followed by “a brief increase before the rate smoothed out as crime continued to fall nationally” — places the post-deployment rate’s convergence with national patterns at the center of the dispute. The task force cites the smoothed rate; CAP cites the smoothing-to-national-rates finding as evidence the trajectory tracks broader trends rather than a deployment-specific effect.

Four candidate explanations for the homicide decline can be tested against the available evidence. The deployment-caused explanation holds that the federal and National Guard deployment caused the homicide rate to fall more sharply during deployment than before; this explanation fails the strong-form test because comparable decline occurred without Guard presence. The pre-existing national trend continuation explanation holds that the decline tracks national patterns at rates comparable to the pre-deployment period; CAP’s comparative analysis finding that “violence would have fallen in Memphis much as it has across other major U.S. cities” supports this explanation, and the smoothing to national rates is also consistent with it. The offsetting effects explanation posits that an initial deterrence effect was offset by displacement, community disruption, or measurement noise, producing no net change attributable to the deployment; CAP’s observation of “a brief initial decrease” followed by “a brief increase before the rate smoothed out” is consistent with this reading. The transient acceleration explanation holds that the deployment produced a brief initial acceleration in the homicide decline that the regression analysis averaged out as the rate smoothed to the national level; CAP’s own observation is consistent with this reading as well, though the same evidence does not distinguish it from the trend-continuation explanation.

The pre-deployment 26% decline from 2024 to 2025 is the diagnostic hinge. CAP’s “despite multiple tests” framing, combined with the smoothing to national rates after a brief post-deployment bump, places the weight on the trend-continuation explanation. The most diagnostic evidence not in the available reporting is a counterfactual regression holding deployment timing constant that CAP has not, in available reporting, released in full specification.

The lethal-force incidents

Four men have been killed in gunfire by federal agents working with the task force. The July-through-September window introduced the contested evidence. Two National Guard soldiers killed Tyrin Johnson over the Fourth of July weekend; the family’s autopsy found he was shot in the back. The task force said the soldiers were “chasing an armed robbery suspect”; the autopsy wound trajectory contradicts that framing. Community organizer Lucci Chambless, who has been in close contact with the Johnson family, told The Guardian that “the timing is suspicious,” referring to a patrol reduction the task force attributed to a unit rotation. The Tennessee National Guard and the governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Chambless’s further characterization — “Tyrin Johnson certainly would still be alive if the national guard had been stopped” — is a counterfactual claim that the autopsy does not by itself resolve and that goes beyond what the available reporting can verify. The legal disposition of any of the four killings is not addressed in the available reporting.

Civic and political response

Public sentiment in Memphis shifted after the Johnson shooting. Tamboli’s, a pizza restaurant in midtown Memphis, went viral for refusing to seat National Guard troops in protest of the deployment. A call by conservatives to boycott the restaurant instead packed it with supporters, and more than 50 other businesses have signed on to a “buy-cott” with Tamboli’s affirming their stance. Board to Beers owner Taylor Herndon, whose board-gaming bar near the University of Memphis has joined the refusal, said “we have a lot of customers that we have started seeing because of the boycott” and that customers have reached out to “thank us for being on the right side of history, and that they feel comfortable coming because of it and that they feel support because of it, which has been amazing.” Herndon reported that the “national guard lockout” has had a “positive impact on business.” She described the gap between community response and elected leadership: “It’s been hard, because I keep fighting and I keep fighting, and it seems like things just keep getting worse. Despite thinking: ‘Oh, it can’t get any worse,’ but it does.” Herndon contrasted Memphis with “Democratic-led cities like Portland and Chicago” that, according to The Guardian, “have resisted such deployments rhetorically, in court and in the street.”

The deployment’s effects on formal local politics traced a slower arc. The Memphis City Council rejected a resolution condemning the federal surge when it first arrived. Elections earlier this year produced what Chambless described as a council “more receptive to resistance.” A new crop of county commissioners may restart legal action, Chambless added. Children of deportees from the El Corralón nightclub raid — 120 arrests, “the most in one operation in state history,” with many already deported — presented themselves at a Memphis City Council hearing in advance of possible renewed legal action. Chambless described the task force’s activities as “as transparent as mud,” citing the El Corralón raid as one example.

Deployment sequence and stakeholder salience

The deployment sequence is anchored in public records. Trump signed an executive order last September directing agents from the ATF, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies into Memphis. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, paired that with additional state patrol officers and the activation of 1,500 Tennessee National Guard members to patrol downtown streets, forming the task force alongside U.S. Marshals Service personnel.

The actors identified in reporting hold differing combinations of power, legitimacy, and urgency as those attributes are defined in the Mitchell, Agle & Wood (1997) Academy of Management Review salience framework. The federal task force itself holds all three attributes through constitutional authority, statutory legitimacy, and the urgency of its stated crime-reduction mandate. The Trump administration and Gov. Lee’s office hold formal authority and electoral mandate but face declining urgency as the deployment rotates down. The Tennessee National Guard holds power through state authority and contested legitimacy following the Johnson autopsy, with the Tennessee National Guard and the governor’s office not responding to requests for comment in advance of reporting. Memphis residents in affected neighborhoods hold legitimacy and urgency; their collective power has risen through local elections this year. Families of the four men killed by federal agents hold legitimacy through victim status and urgency through grief, but limited formal power. The more than 50 businesses signed onto the buycott hold legitimacy through civic action and urgency through community positioning; their individual salience is modest but coalition-forming. Researchers at the Center for American Progress hold methodology-based legitimacy but limited direct power in Memphis’s local policy environment. The children of deportees from the El Corralón raid who presented at the hearing, and community organizers such as Chambless, hold urgency without established power or full legitimacy at this site.

The Memphis City Council’s salience has risen with its changing membership. The federal task force’s urgency component has arguably declined with the troop pullback, attributed by the task force to a unit rotation. The buycott coalition’s collective salience has risen with participant count and visibility. Fewer National Guard troops are patrolling downtown Memphis today, a reduction the task force attributes to a unit rotation; the basis for that reduction is not addressed in the available reporting.

What the analysis does not establish

The available reporting does not establish whether any marginal deployment effect on crime exists; whether the brief post-deployment increase reflects deployment causation; the legal disposition of any of the four killings; the basis for the patrol reduction that coincided with the Johnson autopsy’s release; or the full specification of CAP’s counterfactual regression analysis. The differential diagnosis, the traced consequences chain, and the salience map together point to a deployment whose measurable effects on violent crime the available independent analysis cannot separate from a broader national decline, and whose civic and political costs are now surfacing through autopsy findings, business coalitions, and a city council whose composition has shifted since the surge began.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Differential Diagnosis: Lists the candidate explanations for a symptom and rules them out one by one.
Process Tracing: Reconstructs the step-by-step causal pathway of a specific historical event.
Stakeholder Mapping: Charts the parties to a situation — their interests, power, and alignments.
Critical Mass: Adoption that becomes self-sustaining only once it passes a tipping threshold.
Principal–Agent Problem: An agent acting for a principal has its own interests, which can quietly diverge.