As National Guard troops are set to be deployed to Memphis to fight crime, city and state officials have cited a “25-year low” in Memphis’ overall crime as proof that things in place are working.
The announcement of a 25-year low in crime came from the Memphis Police Department in a Sept. 9 press release. The numbers were met with scrutiny by some who found such a decrease questionable.
In 2024, Memphis did see an 11% decrease in overall crime, according to statistics from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. That decrease, however, was not the lowest since 2000, and is actually only a lower crime rate than 2023 and 2022.
The city’s claim that crime is at a 25-year low was further questionable due to preliminary TBI statistics collected by the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission. In July this year, the crime commission released statistics comparing crime from the first half of 2025 to the same time in previous years. That data showed a similar trend, with crime through the end of June 2025 being lower than the same time period as 2024, 2023 and 2022, but still higher than it was in 2021 and earlier.
It was, however, according to the crime commission’s numbers, lower than the crime rate in 2011.
Is crime in Memphis actually down?
So, is the city wrong in its assertion that crime is at a 25-year low? The answer is complicated, though it boils down to how the city counts crime compared to the TBI.
The TBI counts its crimes with a focus on victims. In its statistics, which are mirrored in how the FBI tabulates its crime data for the entire country, each victim of a crime is counted as a distinct crime. This is a common way to report crime because it is also how someone accused of a crime is criminally charged.
For example, if someone were to shoot and injure five people in a single act of gun violence, TBI and FBI would count that as five aggravated assaults. Once that person is arrested, and if prosecutors decide to charge the person with only aggravated assault, they would be charged with five counts of the crime.
However, the city tabulates its crime stats based on incidents. In the example above, the city would count the shooting as a single aggravated assault since police responded to a singular shooting.
This version of reporting statistics takes an incident-focused approach, basing the numbers around how many scenes police respond to in a given time.
Though the numbers used by the city are technically accurate, the methodology behind them can make it difficult to compare overall crime between years. By reporting based on incidents, and not victims, it is difficult to know how many people have been affected by crime in a given year.
Memphis Police Department Public Affairs Manager Faith King said, in a statement to The Commercial Appeal, that MPD “has been, and continues to report crime in accordance with TBI and FBI guidelines.”
Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, and followed on X @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Is Memphis crime the lowest in 25 years? What statistics say