A law enforcement initiative in Memphis, Tennessee, has resulted in 189 missing children being found and the arrest of 12,747 individuals over the past year, with overall crime expected to hit a 25-year low, the White House said on Tuesday.
Arrests made by the Memphis Safe Task Force, a multi-agency initiative established by presidential memorandum in September 2025, include 1,408 known gang members, as well as 1,363 people apprehended for narcotics offenses, 1,276 for firearms violations, 131 for homicide, and 125 for sex offenses, the White House said on the task force’s first anniversary.
One of the individuals arrested through the task force’s efforts is a 19-year-old who was indicted on May 24 for child-related sex crime charges, including raping a minor, according to a June 10 statement from the U.S. Marshals Service. In January, the Marshals Service also announced the recovery of two siblings and a toddler.
Overall crime in Memphis has declined nearly 36 percent from last year, with significant downturns across several crime categories, including motor vehicle theft, down 57 percent; shoplifting, down 44 percent; robberies, 42 percent; murders, 36 percent; sexual assaults, 28 percent; and aggravated assaults, 26 percent, the White House said.
The presidential memorandum signed by President Donald Trump last year said Memphis was suffering from “tremendous levels of violent crime.”
The task force’s objectives include ending “street and violent crime in Memphis” through measures such as hypervigilant policing, large-scale saturation of certain neighborhoods with law enforcement personnel, and aggressive prosecution, according to the memorandum.
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The White House said in a Sept. 15 post on X that the task force’s actions over the past year have been a resounding success.
Accusations of Harassment
The plaintiffs had sought to gather information about the task force’s activities on the streets, in line with First Amendment rights, according to the lawsuit.
Task force agents issued verbal threats, engaged in physical intimidation, shone lights at cameras and phones to obscure filming of their public activities, photographed plaintiffs’ faces and license plate numbers, and used excessive force against a plaintiff, the plaintiffs alleged in the lawsuit.
Examples of seized evidence presented during a Memphis Safe Task Force roundtable in Memphis, Tenn., on March 23, 2026. Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images
The plaintiffs claimed they faced retaliation and harassment while engaging in “constitutionally protected information-gathering and recording activities.”
In a July 6 filing opposing the residents’ request for a preliminary injunction, the federal defendants criticized the plaintiffs’ claims, arguing that they are unlikely to prevail on their First Amendment claims.
“Plaintiffs’ own declarations evidence that their so-called ‘observations’ frequently involve efforts to interfere with and impede law-enforcement operations, including repeatedly disregarding orders, refusing multiple orders to step back from established perimeters, stalking law enforcement agents in their vehicles, and one Plaintiff even resisting arrest while calling for bystander interference with her arrest,” federal government attorneys wrote.
Interfering with and obstructing law enforcement operations is not protected speech, they said in the filing, adding that the agents’ enforcement actions do not impede an ordinary person from engaging in free speech.
