By Nick Valencia | May 20, 2026
MEMPHIS— The official story is this: Memphis had the highest violent crime rate in the country in 2024. So, in the wake of the murder of Tyre Nichols a year earlier, the federal government intervened. As a result, they say, crime went down. End of story.
The reality of what’s happening on the streets of Memphis in May 2026 is far more grim, and largely underreported for months.
Today, the S.C.O.R.P.I.O.N Unit has effectively replaced with the increasingly controversial Memphis Safe Task Force. With an estimated 1,500 personnel on the ground since at least September 2025, the federal task force has brought with it more agencies, more resources, and so far more insulation from accountability.
In a city of approximately 610,000 people, by March 2026, the task force had conducted nearly 97,000 traffic stops and made more than 9,000 arrests, nearly all of them in Black or Brown neighborhoods of Memphis. It’s all part of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in September which established the unit to address crime in the city “through the promotion and facilitation of hyper-vigilant policing, aggressive prosecution…and large-scale saturation of besieged neighborhoods with law enforcement personnel.”
The word “saturation” was not an accident. It was a policy declaration.
The 31-agency unit brings together the Memphis Police Department, the Tennessee National Guard, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, as well as the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But here is where the operation really ramps up and what people are missing: within the task force is ICE.
