Today is 901 Day – a day when we celebrate Memphis, our people, our culture, and the things that make this community unlike anywhere else.
It is also the deadline for cities to apply for the Department of Justice’s new Model Cities Initiative, a nearly $300 million federal funding program inspired in significant part by what the Trump administration says has worked here in Memphis.
That should get our attention.
DOJ is holding Memphis up as a national model for the federal law enforcement surge that began here last September. The department says two to four cities will receive Model Cities funding to expand approaches that include proactive policing, greater federal-local coordination, new surveillance and data technology, prosecution, reentry, mental health services, and violence prevention.
Some of those investments are things Memphis desperately needs.
But the Model Cities Initiative is not a normal grant.
The awards are three-year cooperative agreements, which DOJ says allow the federal government to have “substantial involvement” in carrying out the work. Applicants must agree to jointly develop, implement, administer, and evaluate the initiative with DOJ. The required mayoral certification goes even further, requiring local governments to commit in writing to working closely with, and, “as appropriate, receiving direction from DOJ,” on the implementation of anything that results from MCI.
We already know what federal-local coordination looks like in Memphis, because we’re living it.
The Memphis Safe Task Force has brought federal agents, state law enforcement, and the Tennessee National Guard into our neighborhoods. Crime has gone down substantially, and we should not pretend otherwise. But the decline began well before the Task Force arrived, and the claim that this federal operation created Memphis’ crime decline has never been demonstrated. Any honest accounting has to measure against a 2019, pre-pandemic baseline rather than the exceptional years right after – and MPD should have to show what its own strategies contributed, separate from wherever crime was already heading nationally.
We’re also learning more about what this has cost.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has investigated eight use-of-force incidents involving Task Force personnel, including four fatal shootings. None of the officers involved in those incidents have been publicly identified.
One of those killed was 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson. Memphis Police initially said Johnson turned toward National Guard members with a weapon. His recently released autopsy found that the fatal bullet entered his back and exited through his chest. The investigation remains open, but that discrepancy alone should remind us why transparency and independent scrutiny matter.
Just this weekend, ICE carried out a large multi-agency immigration operation on Macon Road. ICE confirmed the August 30 operation but has not publicly provided full details. MLK50 and community monitors with Vecindarios 901 have done much of the work of documenting what’s actually happening on the ground, reporting that roughly 100 people were detained.
That raid came as Memphis businesses are increasingly speaking out about fear and economic harm associated with the Task Force. More than 50 businesses have now signed a pledge pushing back against Task Force activity, saying customers and workers are afraid to drive, go to work, attend church, shop, and participate fully in their own community.
So when DOJ tells us that Memphis is the model, we have to ask: a model for what?
The Model Cities Initiative requirements sharpen that question. DOJ says participating cities must align their initiatives with federal priorities that explicitly include “immigration law enforcement operations.” The funding rules say programs cannot impede federal immigration enforcement, including by denying DHS agents access or failing to honor certain DHS requests and notifications. MCI also calls for expanded federal-local task force collaboration and formal protocols for information sharing and case coordination.
It can fund real-time crime centers, license plate readers, artificial intelligence systems, drones, intelligence gathering, and computer systems connecting jails and community providers.
Those tools are not automatically bad. But in the environment Memphis is living in today, we have to know who gets access to the information, what it can be used for, whether ICE or HSI can access it, how long it is kept, and what protections exist for residents who seek public or community services.
There is also an extraordinary financial condition buried in the program.
DOJ says the eventual agreement will include provisions requiring a participating city to reimburse the federal government for future federal law-enforcement intervention or assistance if there is a “surge in violent crime or public disorder.” The public notice does not tell us what qualifies as a surge, who makes that determination, how much a city could owe, or what happens if federal forces intervene without local leaders requesting them.
These are not small details. We should not have to discover the answers after the agreement has been signed.
Before Memphis commits to the Model Cities Initiative, our community deserves to see the full application and every agreement that follows from it. We need clear answers about ICE, HSI and DHS cooperation; surveillance and data sharing; the role of MPD, the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and other agencies; financial liability; and the protections that will exist for civil rights and access to public services.
Memphis can use more resources for violence prevention, mental health care, young people, reentry, victims, and neighborhood stability. Those investments should not require us to surrender local control or accept harms to some of our neighbors as the price of admission.
We can want less violence and more freedom. We can appreciate falling crime without giving anyone a blank check.
If Washington wants to make Memphis the model for the rest of the country, Memphis should first insist on knowing – and publicly debating – exactly what that model means and what it requires.
Before Memphis says yes: show us the deal.
