Making Beale Street Squeal
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 15, 2025
Once again, Donald Trump is setting us up with a pretend campaign to stamp out crime in Memphis using Tennessee National Guardsmen, an unknown deployment of federal agents, and the threat of active Army troops. New Orleans apparently is being set up to follow.
As with the deployment in Washington, D.C., Trump already stands ready to declare serious crime eradicated even before the first armed personnel carrier drives down Beale Street. The action once again pushes the limits of the law, though this time carrying the imprimatur of Republican Gov. Bill Lee, if not Democratic Mayor Paul Young, and once again, we have targeted a majority Black city with a Black mayor as a hub for crime despite declining violent crime statistics.
Memphis, apparently to be followed by New Orleans, are alternatives to Chicago, which, like Los Angeles has bucked mightily at the idea of armed military on its streets, not to crime reduction — as Trump alleges repeatedly.
Over the weekend — even before the first Guardsman suits up — Trump again vowed he alone will have reduced crime within days, much as he claims for Washington, much as he claims for the economy, education, health and international ceasefires that never quite turn out so.
Choosing a blue city in a red state seems politically more palatable. Choosing another city as a crime center with a sizable Black population seems a political association hard to ignore.
What has become apparent is that these deployments are political theater that are temporary, do not address crime other than by show of force or the roots of crime. Rather they are a blind for immigration arrests and deportation, and a show of control and power in urban areas that would seem a forerunner to other Trump “emergency” declarations over civil protests or even elections. They are a significant step towards dictatorship.
Trump even has dropped any necessity to declare an “emergency,” and any inevitable, slow court challenges that follow.
Target: Memphis
Targeting Memphis, another city where crime rates are down over a year ago but up over pre-Covid days, has raised other questions.
If Governor Lee, who has been in office for more than six years, wanted to deploy National Guardsmen in Memphis, he has had ample opportunity to do so. Instead, Lee, who authorized Tennessee Guard to Washington, has been part of Republican leadership in the state to oppose laws about gun restrictions, hiring of more cops, and other bills related either directly to crime or social conditions giving rise to crime. Spending on education and social programs have been cut rather than bolstered.
Lee also is sending a small number of state highway patrol troopers into the city to buttress the effort — another step Lee could have taken at any time. Indeed, Mayor Young, who says his job is to figure out how to coordinate with the incoming forces, ran on a get-tough-on-crime campaign message.
The Memphis police department has a checkered record itself in community policing. The U.S. Justice Department, under previous management, brought civil actions against the Memphis police after the July, 2023, investigation of systemic excessive force and discrimination against Blacks. An investigation into the death of Tyre Nichols resulted in criminal charges for former officers and a $550-million civil lawsuit filed by the family. There have been other cases with similar complaints.
In May, Trump’s Justice Department dismissed all charges against the police, and the three police officers were acquitted of state charges, including murder in the Nichols case, though they had been convicted on federal charges for violating Nichols’s civil rights, with another two officers also involved facing federal consequences. Those officers are seeking to dismiss all charges.
So, Trump’s premise is that only some crime will qualify for reduction.
Trump’s televised example was a railroad business owner with dealings in Memphis, where he says he must drive with guards even a few blocks downtown to meetings. Of course, the rest of the world does not measure crime by fear of crime, but actual reported crime.
It’s Optics, Not Crime
Despite what Trump says has happened, the Washington deployment proved that sending even a couple of thousand Guardsmen mostly to patrol national monuments and Union Station does not significantly affect daily crime reports. If anything, the public posturing moves would-be robbers to less-trafficked areas in and around the city.
Of 1,273 non-immigration arrests in Washington, 470 involved federal agents over the month of deployment in all areas of the city, The Washington Post has found. One in four involved gun charges — something that will not apply in open-carry Tennessee — and many involved relatively minor charges, like an open-alcoholic beverage. Many involved stops not previously authorized by city law enforcement. Grand juries have opted against felony charges in many cases.
Increasingly, these deployments appear to be for optics and not for sustainable drop in violent crime.
Agents and Guardsmen deployed with police are duplicating efforts already under way and not addressing the social problems that feed crime. Trump seems more interested in being able to go to dinner at a restaurant, which he did this week with advisers in tow, though he ran into vocal protestors.
From Trump’s point of view, any criticism of the deployments is simply an endorsement of existing crime.
Apart from all else, the deployments — paid for by the federal government — are temporary, and by being capped at 29 days, deny benefits payments to thousands of Guardsmen taken away from their jobs to meet an unclear, ill-defined anti-crime effort. Those in Washington were first deployed without weapons, then armed, but told not to make arrests, barred by law.
The numbers envisioned in Memphis have not been specified but are expected to be far fewer. There are 2,100 police officers in the Memphis Police Department for a city of 610,000 over 288 square miles. In New Orleans, the Pentagon has drawn documents to deploy up to 1,000 Louisiana National Guard troops for a city of 300,000, according to The Washington Post.
The rules of engagement and the precise tasks of deployed troops remain unidentified amid military and federal laws that bar policing by troops.
The talk of Beale Street will be that crime will happen whether Trump troops are there or not.
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