Lawmakers pass bill requiring reports on pleas, changed charges for Memphis task force cases

Gov. Bill Lee’s desk now awaits a bill requiring the Shelby County district attorney to notify officials if certain “serious” cases arising from the federal task force in Memphis result in a plea, lowered charge or dismissal.

The Memphis Safe Task Force — a collaboration between multiple state and federal agencies and the Tennessee National Guard — has been operating in Memphis since September at the direction of President Donald Trump.

Sen. Brent Taylor and Rep. John Gillespie, both Shelby County Republicans, spearheaded the legislation against opposition from Democratic Shelby County legislators, who said the bill creates unnecessary extra work for a district attorney’s office already overburdened by the surge in cases.

Members of Trump’s administration visited Memphis in March to tout the task force’s arrest count, which now exceeds 7,700. This includes 47 homicide arrests, 848 related to controlled substances, 680 for firearms violations and 99 for sex offenses, the U.S. Marshals Service reported on April 2. 

The task force’s presence is visible on Memphis streets, where teams of federal agents from multiple agencies and Tennessee Highway Patrol officers have made more than 100,000 traffic stops in the last six months, Taylor said Thursday. Task force agents issued nearly 18,000 traffic citations as of March 22, the U.S. Marshals reported.

The bill passed in the Senate on Thursday 27-5, and previously passed in the House 74-21.

Under the legislation, any district attorney who receives a case from the Memphis Safe Task Force would have to report pleas, dismissals and lowered charges to the attorney general, the district attorneys general conference, the state speaker of both the Senate and House, and the appropriate U.S. Attorney. Taylor has acknowledged that the Shelby County district attorney will handle the vast majority of non-federal cases related to the task force.

Reporting will be required for “serious offenses,” including several murder, homicide and manslaughter charges, felony firearm and drug offenses, sexual offenses, felony theft, organized retail crime, and gang-related or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization crimes. The reporting requirement would end June 30, 2028.

Shelby County District Attorney Stephen Mulroy previously stated that there is no automated way to identify task force cases, so the legislation will require his staff to manually separate task force cases from other cases handled by his office to compile weekly reports. This will divert time away from other tasks such as investigating, preparing for trial and helping victims, Mulroy stated.

Taylor said the legislation is “designed to ensure that we lock in … historic gains in reduction of crime.” 

Taylor said the legislation would alert the U.S. Attorney if a case has been dropped at the state level, giving them the opportunity to prosecute at the federal level if there is a federal connection. He estimates 25% of the task force’s cases will be tried in federal court.

Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat, highlighted that the city’s crime rate was trending down before Trump’s task force began due to “long-term, sustainable efforts to reduce crime.”

“The (Memphis) Safe Task Force is appearing that it is reducing crime, but it’s not,” she said. “It’s just a short-term over-saturation of law enforcement officers. It’s not really stopping crime. It’s just scaring people to stay in the house.”

“No other county or city has this level of oversight that we’re pushing on Memphis,” Lamar said. “It’s simply not fair. No other DA or county has to be subjected to reporting requirements that are listed in this bill.”

On Monday, Rep. Justin Pearson, a Memphis Democrat, asked Gillespie on the House floor how arrests and cases would be credited to the task force, which he refers to as the “Memphis Unsafe Task Force.”

“How are you tracking who is being arrested as a part of this Memphis Unsafe Task Force, compared to just the police department’s everyday courses of action?” Pearson asked.

While the U.S. Marshals have provided general arrest numbers and summaries of select individual cases, a full accounting of all individuals arrested under the task force’s operations and their charges has not been made publicly available.

The task force, Pearson said, is not one entity, but a collection of more than 20 agencies. 

“Putting more work on the district attorney and the district attorney’s office without there being clear transparency about which arrests are being credited (to) the Memphis Unsafe Task Force is one of the problems with this piece of legislation,” he said.

Gillespie responded by stating that “Memphis is a safer place now as it was before this task force started,” and referred Pearson to the “language of the bill.”

The final version of the bill states only that the district attorney must compile weekly reports on plea agreements, lowered charges, or dismissals of specified “serious … charges of which resulted from the Memphis Safe Task Force or a federal task force to combat violent crime.”

The bill does not specify how the district attorney is to determine which cases resulted from task force activity.