Crime Prevention through Environmental Design
University of Memphis Police Services Community Outreach: A Decade in Review
State certified police departments such as the University of Memphis Police Department have opportunities and access to academic partners that other police departments don’t
have; a brain-trust focused on creating and maintaining safe spaces just steps away
from headquarters. Our partnership from 1999 going forward with the UM’s School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy places us in a unique position to explore and experiment with the changing tenants,
priorities and protocols of policing in America as the nation grapples with reform.
At UMPD, we understand the assignment and understand that a campus serving upwards
of 27,000 cannot be secured without also keeping our fingers on the pulse of the community
that surrounds us, and it’s in the best interests of all stakeholders that we work
to address proximate issues that detract from our safety and quality of life on campus
and off.
In 2013, the university established the Community Liaison position and recruited a
crime prevention professional from the Center for Community, Criminology and Research
-- the UM research group that developed the “Blue CRUSH” crime analysis protocol that
continues to frame Memphis Police Department’s decision-making for patrol and intervention
allocation. For the last decade, Tk Buchanan has led our department in developing
strategies to reduce both crime and the blight that “signals” social disorder and
actually invites crime into the Tiger’s Den. Tk works directly with leadership from
nine surrounding neighborhoods, three nonprofits serving our area and the University
District Business Alliance on strategies to address our community’s most challenging
and prevailing issues. Tk earned a Masters in Urban Sociology from the UofM and is
nationally certified in Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), School
Safety and in Placemaking to Design Out Crime through the National Institute for Crime Prevention, and as such, chairs our Campus Action Planning and Response team, reviewing incidents
and evaluating campus property for points on which we may intervene to change landscaping
and/or architecture, which helps make our campus the safest statewide, according to
the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s annual rankings. With 28 years’ experience testing and perfecting these methods in Memphis neighborhoods,
Tk focuses exclusively on communities and properties that impact the Tiger Nation.
What follows is an overview of this work and the resulting partnerships, including
milestones and performance measures.
The University District Police Joint Agency (UDPJA)
Established in 2013 as our very first step towards securing and stabilizing the communities
that cradle campus and celebrating its tenth year alongside our creation of this civilian-led
crime abatement initiative, this working group includes representatives from each
community and nonprofit, plus all governmental agencies and organizations tasked with
addressing the issues these leaders identify as priorities. Code Enforcement, both
mayors’ offices, the Shelby County Health Department, divisions of Housing and Community
Development, the Commission on Aging, Parks and Recreation, Public Works, plus command
staff from the two Memphis Police Department precincts in our area and UMPD’s chief
of police are all members of this working group and interface monthly, as well as
work on issues in real time with community leadership through our liaison. Since assembling
this group and establishing a protocol where community leadership holds agencies accountable
in person for progress or lack thereof in achieving code and law compliance, our service
area has realized a blight reduction of 75% and a comparable crime reduction which lasted until 2022, when the nation experienced a radical shift in crime patterns and the relationship
between blight and crime no longer drove these statistics, as population density,
architectural design and what scholars are coming to understand as the breakdown in what philosopher John Hobbs referred to as the social contract started undermining the gains we’d made.
Using this PJA model, we connected with nonprofits that serve the area to provide
professional consultation on blight and crime remediation and reviewed development
plans for safety features and land use congruency, and our success prompted the city’s
mayor’s office to ask us to extend our reach and expertise outside of the University
Planning District and help our next-door neighbors address issues that often also
divert criminal enterprise to our doorsteps. We started working with groups in Orange
Mound (the community next door to our stadium and Tiger Lane and host community for
the Porter Leath UM teaching lab) on redevelopment planning for Orange Mound East
(which connects campus to Tiger Lane, and we work with Kingdom Community CDC) and
with the Belt Line (the host neighborhood for Tiger Lane, with our housing development
partners, Jacob’s Ladder CDC) on blight remediation ahead of new construction of affordable
housing and coming construction of “Senior Cozy Cottages” that will allow seniors
to remain in the neighborhoods where they raised families as they age out of independent
living and into a hybrid alternative in its early stages of development by Jacob’s Ladder CDC. We reached north of Tiger Lane and provided framework for problem solving for communities
along Central Avenue and south of our Park Avenue campus (Sharpe-Dunn). Finally, we
review development plans for these communities for architectural safety (in compliance
with tenants of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) and help leadership
prepare to support or oppose infill development.
In 2017, we were contacted by the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission and the UDPJA model we created was reviewed as an Operation Safe Communities Best Practice. We worked with government and law enforcement partners to replicate most of the
tenants of this data-driven approach to prioritizing high impact issues and systematizing
accountability in two other planning districts (Raleigh/Frayser and Binghamton/Nutbush),
with plans to replicate citywide by police precinct.
Starting the next year, in 2018, the two precincts referenced above along with us (in Tillman Precinct) served as the pilot groups for a larger collaborative process, measuring our effectiveness and the relationships we built and creating protocols to recommend replication citywide. According to the Crime Commission’s Safe Community Action Plan 2022-2026, these three areas realized a crime reduction greater than citywide average and greater than communities not represented by such collaboration. The University of Memphis Public Safety Institute believes these partnerships are greater than the reductions in crime and blight we can measure, and to some degree, pandemic conditions undermined efforts to solicit and engage community leadership during this period—and the protocols depend greatly on effective and engaged community leadership. We agree and believe even greater gains will be realized and reported in this next decade. The evaluation published by PSI for the “Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative, reports a level of satisfaction with local government and agencies that does not reflect the Memphis mean we read in comments sections in related stories from every news outlet. Community leaders surrounding our campus expressed general satisfaction with the outcomes realized in our University District Police Joint Agency, agreeing further that housing code was becoming stronger and the agencies charged with enforcement were doing better the longer our partnership continues, and for the first time in local memory, minor code complaints are being resolved in areas that had been neglected and in areas included in within our boundaries where citizens are less engaged. In short, this partnership has built solid and healthy relationships with our surrounding neighbors that has stood the test of time and persisted even in the face of unpopular development decisions and traffic flow issues impacting our area.
Celebrating A Decade of Community & Law Enforcement Partnership: National Night Out
The University of Memphis Police Department, in partnership with University District INC and through the working group we built with the UD Police Joint Agency, has cosponsored this event annually since adding the position of community liaison, aimed at strengthening relationships with law enforcement and with building trust. Nationally celebrated the first Tuesday in August, we realized after our first year that Memphis in August creates heat-related obstacles for participation in outdoor events, and we soon discovered that states such as Texas and Florida elect to host this event in October. We started lobbying our city and state to join our southern neighbors in October, and by 2018 the city of Memphis joined us in this lobby, and we convinced the state of Tennessee to follow. Now National Night Out is celebrated on the first Tuesday in October and turn-out has improved significantly. We celebrated virtually in 2020 and 2021, but by 2022 we were assembling in person again, ‘taking back’ our neighborhoods at night from fear and criminal enterprise and celebrating our fruitful partnership. These events are thoroughly documented on social media, and we encourage the #TigerNation to follow UDistrict Memphis on Facebook and join us!
University District, INC (UDI) and University Neighborhoods Development Corporation (UNDC): Nonprofits Born from University Partnerships
Dating back to 1999 and originally called “the University District Initiative,” these
first few conceptual stages included a working group convened by the president’s office,
of scholars and their students together with community, business and nonprofit leaders
in our area, all working together to create the process and develop the tools that
helped us imagine what our planning district could be, how a large urban institution
of higher learning could tread more gently and be better neighbors as we strive to
matriculate thousands, and created a framework for setting up organizations aimed
at enhancing quality of life and addressing obstacles to smart development and community
safety. The university seeded two nonprofits during this period, dedicated to work
with our communities on the things our communities identified that mattered most,
and each with grassroots leadership, professional boards, and with discrete missions
and goals.
UNDC The University Neighborhoods Development Corporation is the 501c3 nonprofit organization
that manages a Tax Increment Financing capture for Highland Street frontage commercial
properties and works to improve and enhance pedestrian features and infrastructure
along our commercial corridor. UNDC worked in the last decade to bring us protected
crosswalks, wider sidewalks, benches and landscaping for Highland & Walker and they’ve
sponsored over 30 Blue CRUSH MPD cameras covering the Highland Strip area, consulting
extensively with UMPD and our community liaison for acquisition and placement. The
TIF capture area is included in UMPD’s patrol area and we work together in real time
to respond and resolve issues that arise with commercial properties in our area. Most
recently, UNDC’s accomplishments were featured in University of Memphis Magazine.
UDI University District, INC is the area’s oldest community development corporation,
born from the ideas of our community, academic and law enforcement partners around
that inaugural table in 1999 and a then radical notion put forth by partners with
the UM Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action/ Center for Criminology
Community and Research (CBANA/C3R) that the key to reducing crime and improving quality
of life is maintaining contact with, within and across communities. UMPD’s community
liaison, then, a graduate research assistant for CBANA/C3R, was part of this community
of scholars and spent the next 14 years testing this theory in neighborhoods throughout
the city. She posited that if we facilitated relationships and created opportunities
to gather around positive events, those ties would serve to bind these communities
in times of need. Nearly 25 years later, it is clear this organization served and
continues to serve as a linchpin for community safety for our planning district. UDI’s
board is populated by representatives from each neighborhood surrounding campus, a
representative from the University District Business Alliance and a representative
from our nonprofit housing developer, Jacob’s Ladder Community Development Corporation.
They are a community-based CDC who produces four static events annually (including
Holiday on Highland, pictured left) and cosponsors with our department programming
and projects aimed at