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| Officers from Tennessee Highway Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI responded to a. traffic stop on Lamar Ave. in Memphis, Tennessee on Oct. 7, 2025. They detained the driver for at least 45 minutes while they searched his car, then let him go with a citation for a loose front bumper. (Photograph by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) |
by Cassandra Stephenson, Tennessee Lookout, October 20, 2025 - A Tennessee Highway Patrol officer rested his hat on the roof of a white sedan — its front plastic bumper slightly sagging, doors and trunk open — as he searched between the front seats with a flashlight.
The car’s driver, a middle-aged Black man with dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail, stood between another Highway Patrol officer and a man in an FBI vest near the hood of a THP vehicle and an unmarked pickup truck. The driver crossed his arms and stared at his feet, outfitted in white socks and slides. Two more officers wearing Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) vests walked between the sedan and the flashing blue lights of the THP car.
It was just after dusk on a Tuesday at a Sunoco gas station on Lamar Avenue, a main roadway that runs through several of Memphis’s most poverty-stricken neighborhoods, where the overwhelming majority of residents are minorities, according to the U.S. Census.
Two additional unmarked vehicles pulled into the small gas station and three more officers emerged: one U.S. marshal and two others wearing vests labeled only, “POLICE,” bringing the total to eight law enforcement officers and four vehicles.
At least 45 minutes into what one HSI officer at the scene described to Tennessee Lookout as a “simple traffic stop,” a Highway Patrol officer handed the driver a pink ticket.
The violation: The dangling front bumper.
The driver silently walked around his car, closing the trunk and each of the doors as the eight law enforcement officers slowly withdrew. “Nice talking with you, man,” one officer called over his shoulder as he walked away.
A few minutes later, the driver, who declined to give his name, emerged from his car with a cellphone in his hand.
“That’s the craziest s–t ever,” he said as he lifted the hood and popped the plastic bumper back into place.
A Tennessee Highway Patrol officer and two Homeland Security Investigations officers search a vehicle during a traffic stop on Lamar Ave. in Memphis, Tennessee on Oct. 7, 2025.(Photograph by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
Nearly three weeks after the Memphis Safe Task Force was launched at the direction of President Donald Trump with the support of Gov. Bill Lee, officers from multiple federal and state agencies have issued more than 4,600 traffic citations — far outpacing the task force’s 1,044 arrests and 206 firearm seizures reported by the U.S. Marshals Service as of Friday morning.
Local advocacy groups have logged hundreds of reports from community members of multi-agency traffic stops, some posting videos of the interactions to social media.
Trump established the task force through a presidential memo on Sept. 15 to “end street and violent crime in Memphis to the greatest possible extent.” His memo specifically calls for “strict enforcement” of laws “prohibiting assault, battery, larceny, graffiti and other vandalism, unpermitted disturbances and demonstrations, noise, trespassing, public intoxication, drug possession, sale, vagrancy and use, and traffic violations.”
But federal and state agencies have thus far refused to release details of the citations and arrests — charges, names and circumstances — to the Tennessee Lookout beyond broad categorizations. A Department of Justice spokesperson cited “operational security” as the reason for the limited information but declined to elaborate on the record.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol did not respond to requests for the overall number of traffic stops performed, including those that did not result in citations or arrests. It is also unclear how many of the task force’s arrests resulted from traffic stops.
Lack of data leaves unknowns about impact on ‘violent crime’
Trump, Lee, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and other public officials have celebrated the arrest numbers, crediting the task force with taking hundreds of “career criminals” and “known gang members” off of Memphis streets. But the limited data released by the task force so far does not provide enough information to support these statements, and community advocacy groups contend that the majority of the people being arrested or cited are not violent criminals.
The U.S. Marshals Service’s broad breakdown of the 1,044 arrests includes eight homicides, 48 sex offenses, 110 firearm arrests and 116 arrests involving narcotics charges. Two arrests were due to probation or parole violations, 418 were for “warrants” with no additional explanation provided, 155 were for “other” reasons, and 187 were for Administrative ICE Warrants, which are signed by U.S. Immigration and Customs officials and do not carry the same investigative powers as criminal warrants signed by a judge.
Among those arrested were 92 “known gang members,” according to the U.S. Marshals Service, though the data released does not include any further information about these individuals’ alleged gang ties. U.S. marshals also reported 56 missing children have been located by the task force, but did not include the circumstances of those cases.
A report to local officials of the task force’s actions on Oct. 13 showed that 37 out of the 51 people arrested that day were not charged with violent offenses, according to reporting from MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. This includes seven arrests for people “unlawfully present in the United States” — a civil offense — with no other criminal charges listed. The document also listed 59 misdemeanor citations.
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy reported that his staff had 52% more felony cases and 30% more misdemeanor cases to handle after the task force’s first week, compared with his office’s normal volume. Felony charges can include both violent and nonviolent crimes. Mulroy’s office could not be reached for updated information.
‘Needle in a haystack approach’
Minutes after the stop at the Sunoco station, Tennessee Lookout observed another Highway Patrol vehicle and unmarked pickup truck pulling into a different gas station on Lamar Avenue behind a vehicle with a duct-taped rear window, damaged door and missing front grill.
THP, ATF and FBI officers surrounded the car with a handicap placard hanging from the rearview mirror driven by an elderly Black woman and man. The officers left roughly 15 minutes later. The woman driving the car, who declined to share her name, said the officers told her they pulled her over because the registration tags were not up to date and let her go when they discovered that wasn’t true.
Scarlet Neath, a senior adviser for The Policing Project at the New York University School of Law, said stops like this are examples of “pretextual stops,” or “low-level traffic stops that are made for equipment, administrative (or) other minor violations — like objects hanging from a rearview mirror, a single broken tail light or missing registration sticker — that really have no connection to road safety and which are frequently used as an excuse to look for evidence of an unrelated crime.”
“Police use them as a pretense for fishing for evidence of activity like possessing drugs,” Neath told Tennessee Lookout.
Memphis barred the use of such stops in 2023, a few months after 29-year-old Tyre Nichols died after police beat him during a traffic stop. But state legislators passed a law in 2024 that blocked local governments from instituting such rules, nullifying the Memphis ordinance.
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers materials describe pretextual stops for traffic violations as the easiest way to investigate a driver or vehicle for a suspected crime when an officer might not have enough facts for “reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot.”
Regardless of an officer’s intent for the stop, the training materials state that pretextual stops don’t violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, so long as they are not “based solely on race or religion.” Pretextual stops must also be “reasonable,” and no longer than necessary to investigate “reasonable suspicion.”
Studies of such stops have called their effectiveness and fairness into question.
A study of the Metro Nashville Police Department’s traffic stop practices conducted by Stanford Computational Policy Lab and the Policing Project in 2018 found that “Black drivers were stopped substantially more than white drivers” and “these disparities were particularly pronounced among stops for non-moving violations, such as broken tail lights and expired registration tags.”
The study also found that these stops “had no discernible effect on serious crime rates, and only infrequently resulted in the recovery of contraband or a custodial arrest.”
“Evidence to date on using random low-level traffic stops to interrupt or detect serious and violent crime shows that it’s a needle in a haystack approach,” Neath said.
Another study examining California traffic stop data from 2019 estimated that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department made 58,292 stops that year, but “only 487 (less than 1%) were for suspicion of a crime that could be classified as a felony.” Deputies in Riverside County spent about nine out of every 10 hours on the clock on traffic stops initiated by deputies, adding up to an estimated annual cost of more than $258 million.
The cost of running the Memphis Safe Task Force and the amount of time it spends on stops that don’t result in arrests or citations are unclear.
Neath said more data would be needed to examine whether the task force’s traffic stops are effective, including why a stop was made, its outcome (arrest, deportation, seizure, charges brought, etc.), and whether the person who was arrested or faced an immigration consequence had a history of criminal charges.
“All charges are not created equal in terms of public safety, just like all traffic stops are not equally important to road safety,” she said.
Shelby Co. mayor, advocates say traffic stops generate fear
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris expressed concern about potential racial profiling in the task force’s traffic stops during a Tuesday news conference alongside immigration lawyer Colton Bane and community organizer Carlos Ochoa.
Harris said task force members pulled over one of the county’s employees — a Latino man — and “detained him for a small while, while they investigated his paperwork,” before letting him go without an explanation of why they stopped him.
Bane said he has received “numerous” reports from clients and non-clients of task force officers refusing to return driver’s licenses to Hispanic people after traffic stops. In one instance, a client called Bane during a traffic stop in which Department of Homeland Security and Highway Patrol officers returned the man’s work permit and Social Security card but refused to return his state-issued ID. When Bane arrived and introduced himself as the man’s attorney, a Department of Homeland Security officer retrieved the ID from his pocket, returned it to Bane’s client, and released him.
Bane said the traffic stop was initiated because of his client’s “drive-out” tags — the temporary paper tags that come with vehicles purchased from car dealerships. The client’s temporary tags are valid until Nov. 30, Bane said.
A DOJ spokesperson referred Tennessee Lookout to local law enforcement when asked whether task force members have seized state-issued identification during traffic stops. Tennessee Highway Patrol did not respond to Tennessee Lookout’s questions.
Ochoa, a member of Vecindarios 901, said members of immigrant communities are afraid to leave their homes, seek medical care, take their children to school or visit local parks.
“The most important thing here is to balance safety and liberty,” Ochoa said. “Everyone is interested in reducing crime. Nobody here is interested in reducing liberty … As a community, we need to balance those two things.”
When asked about community response to the task force, a spokesperson for the United States Marshals Service told Tennessee Lookout, “Though some in Memphis are not supportive of the effort, we have found the overall attitude of the residents, as well as local and state leaders, is positive and they are glad to see the efforts being made are reducing crime and putting the dangerous people behind bars and off the streets.”
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