Federal task force designed to make Memphis safer faces scrutiny after two deadly shootings by law enforcement in one week
By Andy Rose, CNN
(CNN) — The fatal shooting of a man in Memphis by an armed Tennessee National Guardsman on Sunday brought shock and concern to some members of the community. Those feelings were still fresh Wednesday when word arrived that another person had been killed by a member of the Memphis Safe Task Force.
“It’s another day in an occupied city,” sighed Jessica Miller, an organizer with the activist group Indivisible Memphis, which has strongly opposed the presence of the task force in her city since it was announced by President Donald Trump on September 15.
The White House cited “tremendous levels of violent crime” in Memphis when it bolstered law enforcement resources there — a move that drew cautious support from the city’s mayor and mirrored a similar effort in Washington, DC.
Wednesday’s shooting of Alfonso Ivy, 47, by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent was the fifth involving a member of the task force and the fourth since May. Officials say the suspect “pointed a handgun at members of the Memphis Safe Task Force,” while fleeing a warrant on drug charges.
In Sunday’s shooting, suspect Tyrin Johnson, 20, was described as a person “armed with a handgun” who had “reportedly fired shots in the area,” although a statement from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says the reason guardsmen fired in that case is “under investigation.”
The Trump administration and its Republican supporters in Tennessee point to falling crime in the city known as the Home of the Blues as proof that the task force is effective in making residents safer. The city has faced the distinction of having the highest violent crime rate last year among US cities with a population over 250,000, according to a CNN review of FBI data.
But after the fatal shootings this week, and with no end to the task force mission in sight, critics say they feel under siege.
“There’s no accountability, and there’s no goalposts,” said Miller. “Even where there were goalposts, they keep being moved.”
Few answers yet on Task Force shootings
All five shootings connected to the task force have involved federal law enforcement officers, and the TBI says they are still under active investigation. No updates have been provided about the investigations, and no charges have been filed in any of the cases.
The NAACP on Friday called for a federal investigation into Johnson’s death.
“The federal government has unique expertise and skill in investigating law enforcement misconduct, and in the case of Mr. Johnson, there are challenges that arise given the involvement of federal officials,” state NAACP president Gloria Sweet-Love wrote to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a letter that also called on the Memphis Safe Task Force to be suspended immediately.
The five incidents match the total number of officer-involved shootings involving the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office for all of 2024, according to TBI records. There were four police shooting cases in Memphis investigated by the TBI in 2025 before the task force was formed.
The task force combining local law enforcement with the National Guard, state troopers, and several federal agencies was created with the promise of lowering the city’s crime rates.
“We’ve been here a short while, and in another two or three months, you’re going to have, like, no crime,” Trump said in a speech celebrating the task force in March.
As of Wednesday, there had been a 40% drop in “serious crimes,” including murder and sexual assault, in Memphis over the last 10 months compared to the same period a year earlier, according to city records.
The task force — including its federal, state and local officers — made 10,883 arrests, spokesperson Dave Oney told CNN on Thursday.
Opponents of the task force note that crime was already decreasing in Memphis before the unit’s arrival. The Memphis Police Department said that included nearly 500 fewer people shot in Memphis in 2025 compared to the year before.
As investigations continue, patrols intensify
Although Memphis has mostly Democratic political leadership, the cooperation of Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee – who signed off on the National Guard deployment – has given them little room to fight the presence of armed troops on Memphis streets. Tuesday, Lee told CNN’s affiliate WMC he was waiting for more information on Monday’s shooting.
Although Memphis has mostly Democratic political leadership, the cooperation of Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee – who signed off on the National Guard deployment – has given them little room to challenge the presence of armed troops on Memphis streets after similar deployments were successfully turned back by leaders in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. Tuesday, Lee told CNN’s affiliate WMC he was waiting for more information on Monday’s shooting.
“I am proud of the work they’ve done,” Lee said. “But anytime there is a shooting involving law enforcement or the National Guard, we want to make certain there is a full investigation, and that’s what’s happening.”
Democratic Mayor Paul Young – who himself was the victim of stalking and attempted kidnapping in his own home last year – has said the city is willing to accept the help, and he declined to weigh in on the task force shootings while they are still being investigated.
“I want to let all of the information from the investigation play out before making any remarks,” he said to WMC after Monday’s shooting. “But I will say this. It hurts to lose anybody. And I hate to see anyone lose their life.”
Miller says she passes federal street patrols nearly every day, and some task force patrols are becoming more intense as the National Guard gets involved more directly with law enforcement patrols.
“In the beginning, they were almost like tourists,” she said. “We saw them walking around, going to the Peabody (Hotel), just going down Beale Street, walking around shopping centers. But over the past couple of months, we have seen an increase in the aggressiveness.”
Gov. Lee told NPR when the task force was organized last year, state Guard troops would not be armed unless law enforcement requested it.
Some members of the community say they don’t feel safer and were hoping to get answers from Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis, who was scheduled to attend a public safety town hall hours after Wednesday’s shooting. She had to cancel due to a “conflict,” the state senator hosting the town hall said.
“This is not a reality that anyone should be expected to live in. What is happening is unfathomable,” resident Dai Williams told WMC.
Activists filed suit after clashes with task force
After the intense federal immigration enforcement operations in several major Democratic-majority cities in the past year, local activists say many in the Memphis immigrant community have been afraid to be seen in public for fear of being detained. Indivisible Memphis started a service to deliver food and personal supplies to immigrants.
“We’ve made over 3,000 deliveries in the past year,” said Miller. “People have reported avoiding work, avoiding medical appointments, avoiding school, even avoiding reporting crimes because they fear the interaction with law enforcement.”
Following a pattern seen in other cities, some groups in Memphis have been following Task Force vehicles and monitoring their activity.
Under Tennessee’s “Halo Law,” any law enforcement officer can order a civilian to get at least 25 feet away from a crime scene. Four people represented by the ACLU of Tennessee filed a lawsuit in May accusing the task force of abusing the law to block them from documenting officers’ actions, sometimes ordering them to stay more than 100 feet away from arrest scenes.
“The recent shootings are yet another example of the harm being carried out on the ground that’s making people unsafe,” said Zee Scout, an attorney for the ACLU of Tennessee. “Certainly, it is another example of the importance of documenting what’s happening.”
In one case, Jessica Chodor testified in the lawsuit she approached a scene where law enforcement that was part of the task force had reportedly pulled two people over to document it and was told she had to go back to her car. Chodor refused, body camera footage obtained by the ACLU showed, but moved across the street, saying she would stay 25 feet away.
The state trooper grabbed her as she was walking away from him, the video showed, handcuffing her and forcing her to the ground. The trooper can be heard in the video telling Chodor, “You’re resisting arrest and interfering.”
“While they pinned me to the ground, the officers put such a forceful weight on my back that I could not breathe,” Chodor said in the suit. “The amount of force they were using terrified me, and I worried I could be killed.”
Chodor testified that she was detained for 27 hours and charged with Resisting Official Detention. The charge was dropped in December.
“I am incredibly anxious and scared that they will retaliate against me again,” Chodor wrote in a lawsuit affidavit, “but I refuse to let their intimidation tactics stop me from exercising my rights and supporting my community members who are even more often victimized by their abuses of power.”
In their response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration said the law enforcement response to the activists is constitutional because it “was to respond to obstructive conduct and perform their law-enforcement duties, not to retaliate against Plaintiffs for any First Amendment expressive conduct.”
With no clear answer to how long armed troops and federal agents will remain on their streets, Memphis activists like Miller insist there are better ways to make the city safer.
“There’s things that could be put in place in Memphis that would actually make long-term change to the crime rate instead of an occupation that, whenever they leave, it’s not going to make a difference,” she said.
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CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
