President Donald Trump, in a Homeland Security Roundtable held in the White House on Thursday, praised federal leadership and law enforcement involved with the deployment of the Memphis Safe Task Force, which he credited or a nearly 50 percent drop in the number of reports of serious crimes this month compared to October 2024.
After announcing that Chicago, Illinois, would be the next city to see the deployment of a federal task force, the president cited the early effort in Washington, D.C., and ongoing deployment in Memphis, as successes achieved using the task force model used by his administration.
“I just add a couple of things in Memphis, as you know, where the numbers are down in half already and it’s only been about two weeks,” said Trump. “Nobody thought it was possible.”
Trump’s remarks closely resemble the statistics published by the City of Memphis, which currently show a 45.6 percent decrease in serious crime reports since last year. The highest reduction in police reports occurred for motor vehicle theft, with a 69 percent decline, followed by sexual assault, which saw a 68 percent decline.
Overall calls for police service have also decreased by 17.6 percent, including a 41 percent reduction in the highest-priority calls for a law enforcement response.
“It was very sick city. It was horrible what happened there,” said Trump. “People would go from, if you’re on the board of FedEx, they would ride you one block to the hotel. They said you couldn’t walk it because it was too dangerous. And they’re already feeling better about it.”
He later said that the federal deployment in Memphis was about “halfway through the process.”
Trump stated, “already the numbers are far superior, far, far better than what we would have thought at this time,” before previewing additional deployments.
“We’re going to take care of Chicago. We’re going to take care of Portland. We’re going to take care of Memphis,” said Trump. “We’re proud of DC.”
The task force initially deployed on September 30, though the National Guard only arrived earlier this month. A total of 1,461 arrests have occurred since the task force deployed, including 629 felony arrests and 831 misdemeanor arrests. The city additionally reports 215 arrests for violent warrants.
Watch the full White House live stream of the roundtable:
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Tennessee National Guard” by Tennessee National Guard.
