Four men killed by federal agents working with Memphis task force
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 to the city at President Donald Trump’s direction, faces mounting public skepticism following four killings by federal agents and an independent analysis questioning the deployment’s impact on violent crime.
Trump signed an executive order last September directing agents from the ATF, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies into Memphis. A month later, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, 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 task force claims credit for substantial reductions in violent crime, and the city is on track for the lowest rate of homicides in decades. “The taskforce has been very successful and we appreciate the work the Tennessee national guard has done in helping us reduce crime,” said Brady McCarron, a U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson who fields media requests for the task force. “Overall crime in Memphis is down significantly, dropping nearly 36% year-to-date in 2026 compared to the previous year, according to Memphis police department’s own statistics.”
The city is on pace for 135 murders in 2026, a rate of about 22.2 per 100,000 residents, compared with 184 murders in 2025 and 249 in 2024. A year to the day from the start of the Memphis Safe Task Force, Memphis reported 96 murders, compared with 149 the previous year. Murders in the city’s second quarter decreased by 60% year over year, according to Memphis police department reports.
But Memphis experienced a 26% decrease in murders from 2024 to 2025 before the task force was deployed, according to The Guardian’s analysis of police data. A report by the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, argued that the deployment had no statistically measurable impact on violent crime and that violence would have fallen in Memphis much as it has across other major U.S. cities.
The CAP report, which also examined deployments in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., described the operations as a “political charade” and used statistical regression to measure changes in violent crime against historical patterns and declines elsewhere. “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,” the report said. “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.”
Trump responded by threatening a $5 billion personal defamation lawsuit against the report’s authors unless they retracted the report and issued an apology.
In Memphis, a brief initial decrease in violence when National Guard troops began patrolling was followed by a brief increase before the rate smoothed out as crime continued to fall nationally, according to the report.
Fewer National Guard troops are patrolling downtown Memphis today, a reduction the task force attributes to a unit rotation. The pullback coincides with the release of an autopsy report from the family of Tyrin Johnson, who was shot dead by two National Guard soldiers over the Fourth of July weekend. The task force said the soldiers were chasing an armed robbery suspect; the autopsy said Johnson was shot in the back.
“The timing is suspicious,” said community organizer Lucci Chambless, who has been in close contact with the Johnson family. The Tennessee National Guard and the governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Public sentiment in Memphis began to shift after the 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.
“I think we’re seeing more and more every day that people are coming to the side that they don’t agree with them being here, seeing how they’re harming our community so much,” said Taylor Herndon, owner of Board to Beers, a board-gaming bar near the University of Memphis. Her bar is participating in the national guard lockout, which she says has had a positive impact on business, similar to Tamboli’s. “We have a lot of customers that we have started seeing because of the boycott,” she said. “We already had a large following, but the boycott has definitely helped us reach even more of our community, and we’ve had a lot of people reach out and 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.”
She said she was disappointed that formal resistance by Memphis’s elected leaders has been comparably tepid. “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,” she said. The Memphis City Council rejected a resolution condemning the federal surge when it first arrived, and public reaction had largely been muted until recently. Democratic-led cities like Portland and Chicago have resisted such deployments rhetorically, in court and in the street, according to The Guardian.
The task force’s activities have been “as transparent as mud,” Chambless said, citing as one example an immigration raid earlier this month on the El Corralón nightclub that resulted in 120 arrests — the most in one operation in state history. Many of those arrested have already been deported.
Children of deportees presented themselves at a Memphis City Council hearing Tuesday, addressing a chamber that has become more receptive to resistance after elections earlier this year. A new crop of county commissioners may restart legal action, Chambless added.
“We’re hopeful that maybe they will take up that cause. Especially now that the damages have been shown,” Chambless said. “Tyrin Johnson certainly would still be alive if the national guard had been stopped.”