Of the nearly 125,000 Group A offenses reported in 2023, the Memphis Police Department arrested at least one person in just 17,422 offenses — representing just under 14% of all offenses — according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s annual Crime in Tennessee report.
The report documents major crime statistics from law enforcement agencies around the state. Each department sends TBI its data, which is then compiled into the report.
MPD’s arrest rate, commonly referred to as “clearance,” dropped by almost 4% compared to last year, according to the report. Not only did Memphis police clear a smaller percentage of offenses, the department cleared fewer raw-number offenses.
In 2022, 20,511 offenses were cleared according to TBI. That made up 17.8% of offenses cleared that year. There were 17,422 offenses cleared last year according to the report.
TBI considers an offense “cleared” when at least one person believed to have perpetrated a crime has been arrested. If multiple people committed the same crime, and only one of them were to be arrested, that offense would be considered cleared by the bureau.
In addition to showing arrest numbers, the report also reported the total murders reported increased by 29% between 2022 and 2023. Of the 348 murders reported by MPD, 72 (or 20%) were cleared.
Though murders skyrocketed between 2022 and 2023, reported aggravated assault and simple assault were only marginally higher last year than in 2022. Aggravated assaults jumped about 4%, from 12,376 in 2022 to 12,874 in 2023, and simple assaults jumped 5.4%, from 13,264 to 13,975.
Of the 26,849 total non-sexual assaults reported, 6,392 (13.8%) were cleared. The majority of those clearances came in the simple assault category. Police cleared 29.8% of simple assaults and 17.3% of aggravated assaults.
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Motor vehicle theft offenses increased more than 43% between 2022 and 2023, even as the number of arrests stayed stagnant. Memphis police in 2022 cleared 809 of the 11,084 motor vehicle thefts reported, about 7.3% of all offenses. In 2023, MPD cleared 804 of the 15,868 motor vehicle thefts — about 5.1% of them.
The vast majority of arrests made by MPD officers are still adults, with kids making up about 10.3% of all arrests last year.
MPD did not respond to questions and a request for comment by publication.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis police arrested someone in less than 14% of crimes in 2023
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