Josh Imhof | features editor

In his latest move to crackdown on crime in the United States, President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 15 that he would be sending the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis.

This decision comes a little over a month after the National Guard was deployed in Washington, D.C., and amid growing speculation that he would be deploying troops in Chicago as well.

While no information has been made available on when boots will hit the ground, Trump laid out his plan for Memphis in a memo.

The memo established a “Memphis Safe Task Force” that would “end street and violent crime in Memphis to the greatest possible extent through the promotion and facilitation of hypervigilant policing, aggressive prosecution, complex investigations, financial enforcement and large-scale saturation of besieged neighborhoods.

As of Sept. 9, overall crime rates in Memphis have hit a 25-year low, according to the Memphis Police Department. Specific crimes like murder and aggravated assault have hit six- and five-year lows, respectively.

Prior to Trump’s federalization of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and deployment of the National Guard, crime rates had also been falling in the capital. As of Aug. 11, the day before troops first appeared, violent crimes were down 26% from the year before, according to data published by the D.C. Police. Property crime also saw a minor decrease.

These decreases can be attributed to local community groups, according to Norman Conti, a professor of sociology at Duquesne University.

He said that police play a role in preventing crime, but it ultimately comes down to members of communities being involved and committed to one another.

“This idea that you’re going to bring in national or federal force for crime prevention, unless it’s something like a Jan. 6 insurrection, it doesn’t make any sense,” Conti said. “The problem is in the community, and the solution is in the community.”

This means that the root causes of crime, such as a lack of education or joblessness, are not being taken into consideration, he said.

“It’s almost a childlike simplicity to believe that you’re just going to send in the troops and fix everything,” Conti said.

In Memphis, Mayor Paul Young has voiced similar concerns.

In an interview with MSNBC, Young said that he does not want the National Guard and instead hoped for more federal investment into local crime-prevention and intervention groups.

Other institutions, like the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, said they welcome federal assistance, but that they hope it is used effectively.

Like Young, the Crime Commission’s statement went on to list other areas that federal resources could be helpful in, including investigation efforts and investment in youth intervention programs.

This lack of concentrated investment could be described as a “policy bubble,” said Brooke Shannon, a professor of sociology at the University of Memphis.

This is when a government begins to focus on an issue and either over invests or puts their efforts into ineffective solutions that are not relevant by the time they intervene.

She said that in cases like these, if an incident were to happen involving federal troops, it could look bad on the local government, even if they don’t have their hands on the wheel.

“Ideally, you have the decision-making policy power,” she said. “You don’t want to be answering to [the federal government] about your town that you were elected to serve.”

Nick Rogers, a sociology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said that this kind of federal intervention could lead to issues between local, state and federal government.

“You’re trying to impose more of a top-down one-size-fits-all strategy that comes from the federal government and is imposed on local areas, whether they want it or not, and that generates sort of a resentment and a tension between the local areas and the federal areas,” he said.

While rare, this is not the first time a situation like this has happened in the U.S.

In 1957, then-Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the national guard to prevent nine Black students from entering school despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of desegregation. Former President Dwight Eisenhower stepped in and federalized the troops, ordering them to protect the students and escort them to classes.

In this case, the National Guard obeyed the president and Faubus backed down, but Rogers said that a scenario in which a state governor rejects the federalization of the National Guard and does not back down could lead to a constitutional crisis.

“That’s a volatile situation that we don’t have much precedent for,” he said.

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu