A year ago, the Department of Justice released a pattern and practice findings on the Memphis Police Department that documented systemic abuses and discriminatory enforcement that harmed Black residents. Twelve months later, instead of real reform or positive federal oversight, Memphis has been drawn into a national political performance. At the center is the Memphis Safe Task Force, a political creation of the Trump administration and a clear example of punitive populism, the latest expression of what Alec Karakatsanis names “Copaganda.”
The task force has initiated more than 35,000 traffic stops.
The task force has made more than 3,100 arrests since Oct. 1. Roughly 1,900 of them are for nonviolent offenses. During the same period, the task force has initiated more than 35,000 traffic stops. These numbers appear on a city dashboard that community members have criticized for lacking detail, yet local law enforcement and city/state officials are already being used as evidence of crime reduction. What the numbers actually show is the volume of enforcement, not the presence of genuine reform.
The Trump administration is presenting Memphis to the nation as a model of successful intervention by collapsing traffic stops, misdemeanors and immigration-related encounters into the broad category of crime control.
The Memphis Safe Task Force resembles earlier programs such as stop-and-frisk in New York, Blue CRUSH (Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) in Memphis and the “broken windows to the next level” policing approach that White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller has celebrated. It creates aggressive encounters with marginalized people to create the illusion that such encounters promote safety.
As was the case in so many cities across the country, violent crime in Memphis was declining before the task force was created, reaching what some described as a 25-year low. Crime was also at or near record lows in Chicago and Washington, two other cities where Trump has sent in troops. Though Attorney General Pam Bondi claims to have “reversed the trend of crime” in Memphis, that reversal was already underway.
The immigration data is even more revealing. Nearly 40% of local arrests tied to the task force involve immigration activity. Nationally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested almost 75,000 people with no criminal record. It’s unknown what the numbers show in Memphis. As the Tennessee Lookout reported last week, “Task Force officials initially reported immigration arrest numbers but have since stopped providing that data.”
But, in general, the operation has allowed officials to claim a crime crackdown even when people targeted are not linked to violent offenses. Here in Memphis, local and state officials want the public to conflate law enforcement activity with safety and accept an increase in activity as a substitute for accountability. They want to redirect attention away from the deeper rot in the Memphis Police Department that the DOJ report exposed.
They were sleeping, driving, walking in Memphis. Then Trump’s police task force came. Read the latest from 👇@wendicthomas.bsky.social @kathsburgess.bsky.social @propublica.org mlk50.com/2025/11/03/t…
The public is repeatedly shown selected numbers by Attorney General Bondi’s office — and echoed by local agencies and officials — to reinforce a predetermined story that the task force has created quick, measurable improvements, that these gains justify the erosion of civil liberties and that Memphis is safer because more people have been stopped or detained.
But public safety cannot be measured by the number of people funneled through the criminal legal system. Arrests and traffic stops are not evidence of transformation. They are only evidence of encounters. They say nothing about community trust or the changes required to prevent violence.
This narrative also obscures what has happened since the DOJ released its findings. Rather than embracing federal oversight, the mayor and city administration dismissed the report as “meaningless” and even asked a federal court to disregard it. They then announced another task force to study MPD oversight. Ten months later, that group has not published a single policy or recommendation. The structural problems identified by the DOJ remain unaddressed. In the vacuum created by this refusal to pursue real reform, political actors have substituted a storyline suggesting the city has already turned a corner.
The danger is not only local. When national leaders hold up Memphis as a model without scrutinizing the data, they normalize a strategy that encourages the public to equate policing with safety. One year after the DOJ confirmed what many residents had been saying for decades, we deserve more than political theater.
Other cities with problematic law enforcement agencies deserve more, too: reforms guided by independent oversight, transparency that distinguishes perception from reality and a public safety strategy rooted in truth. Instead, we’ve been offered a spectacle. And the Trump administration is promoting Memphis as a success story even as the underlying issues that threaten our safety remain unresolved.
Earle J. Fisher
The Rev. Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D. is Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church (Memphis), founder of #UPTheVote901 and author of "The Rev. Albert Cleage Jr., and the Black Prophetic Tradition: A Reintroduction of The Black Messiah" published by Lexington Books.