resident Donald Trump on Friday announced the creation of the “Memphis Safe Task Force,” modeled after the task force he says was used to curb crime in Washington, D.C.
Joined by Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and several Cabinet officials, Trump signed a memorandum to formally establish the initiative at the request of Lee, reports Breitbart News.
“It’s very important because of the crime that’s going on, not only in Memphis, in many cities, and we’re going to take care of all of them step by step, just like we did in DC,” Trump said before signing the order.
“We have virtually no crime in DC right now, and we’re going to keep it that way,” he added. “It’s our nation’s capital, we’re going to keep it that way, or we’re going to federalize it if we had to, but we don’t have to anymore because it’s in such great shape.”
According to a White House fact sheet, the task force will include representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, from the Department of the Treasury to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It is expected to apply the same methods used in Washington’s crackdown on violent and non-violent crime to address Memphis’s challenges.
The memorandum also directs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to request Tennessee National Guard units from Gov. Lee and to coordinate with governors of other states to mobilize additional National Guard support if necessary.
Pointing to Memphis’s alarming crime statistics in 2024, Trump noted the city ranked first in violent crime, third in murders, and first in property crime nationwide. “A person is four times more likely to be murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, today than in Mexico City… and you know, Mexico City is not a cake walk,” Trump said.
“It’s been overrun with carjackings, robberies, shootings, and killings. There were 249 murders, 429 rapes, 5,616 burglaries, and 12,522 violent assaults in just the last little while, in 2024 and in pieces of 2025, where it’s actually gotten worse until recently when we sent the FBI down to see what the hell is going on,” he added.
