Analysis · Public safety spending

Memphis Crime Statistics 2024 vs. the FY27 Police Budget

Memphis Police Services is the single largest line in the City of Memphis General Fund. The Young administration's FY27 proposal asks the Memphis City Council to approve $304,048,209 for the department - 33.9% of every General Fund dollar. This page walks through what the 2024 crime picture actually looked like, what the FY27 budget assumes about it, and where the two don't line up.

$304M

FY27 Police Services request

33.9%

Share of the General Fund

$9M

Year-over-year overtime cut, no plan

What 2024 crime data actually showed

The Memphis Police Department publishes monthly crime statistics through its public dashboard, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation aggregates the same data into the annual Crime in Tennessee report. The 2024 calendar-year picture, as reported by MPD and TBI:

Major violent crime categories - homicide, aggravated assault, and robbery - came down from the 2023 peaks that drove the state's 2024 intervention in Memphis public safety.
Motor vehicle theft, the single largest driver of the 2022–2023 property crime spike, declined sharply through 2024 as the Kia/Hyundai theft wave eased and MPD's auto-theft task force ramped up.
Total Group A offenses (the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System category MPD reports against) remained well above the pre-pandemic baseline, even after the year-over-year improvement.

Source: Memphis Police Department public crime statistics; Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Crime in Tennessee 2024. Always check the latest MPD dashboard for revised counts.

What the FY27 budget assumes about that data

A budget is a forecast: it has to assume something about workload, staffing, and overtime. Three FY27 assumptions stand out against the 2024 crime trend:

Overtime is cut by roughly $9 million versus the FY25 actual ($38.8M down to $29.8M proposed), with no precinct-by-precinct plan disclosed for where coverage will be reduced. If 2024's improvement was driven in part by overtime-funded saturation patrols and the auto-theft task force, cutting overtime without naming the trade-off is the assumption Council should be questioning first.
A $28 million attrition (salary-savings) credit is baked into Police Services (Line 051901). That credit only materializes if MPD fails to fill positions. If recruiting succeeds - the stated public-safety goal - the City is short $28M in this division alone.
The Police pension ADC drops from $36.1M (FY26 adopted) to $22.7M (FY27 proposed), a $13.4M reduction in the actuarially determined contribution. At the same time, the voter-approved 2014 sales tax referendum transfer dedicated to public safety pension falls from $26.9M to $13.5M. None of this is tied to any change in crime.

The accountability question

If 2024 crime came down, that is good news worth claiming - but it is not an argument for cutting the operational tools that produced the improvement. The FY27 proposal asks Council to approve a record-size Police Services budget while quietly reducing the two lines most tied to day-to-day enforcement capacity (overtime) and long-term obligations to officers (pension funding). The administration owes Council, and the public, a written explanation for both.

Questions Council should ask before the vote

Which precincts absorb the $9M overtime reduction, and what is the expected impact on response times in each?
What 2024 crime metric does the administration cite as justification for the overtime reduction, and does that metric hold up against year-to-date 2026 numbers?
How does MPD reconcile the $28M attrition credit with its publicly stated recruiting goals?
What is the 10-year pension ADC projection if the FY27 reduction becomes the new baseline?

Keep reading

Budget figures cited from the City of Memphis FY2027 Proposed Operating & CIP Budget (Exhibits B, D, and E). Crime figures sourced from MPD's public statistics and TBI's Crime in Tennessee 2024.