Thursday’s numbers from St. Louis are impressive, but they prove very little yet. After Operation Show Me Justice, a surge that began in August, the Justice Department reported 435 arrests, 412 cleared warrants, 166 seized firearms, and 81 kilograms of drugs. Those are outputs. Safety is an outcome, and St. Louis hasn’t shown one yet.
I’ve worked as an expert witness since 2015, and the job often comes down to separating activity from results. A fund that reports record trading volume hasn’t reported returns. As a husband, father, and small business owner, I want the returns: Fewer shootings and kids who can bike home from practice. My criminal justice degree from Northeastern and eight years in private security taught me to count what happens after the arrest.
My argument is simple. Cooperation among federal, state, and local forces produces durable results, and Memphis is the best evidence. President Donald Trump created the Memphis Safe Task Force with a memorandum signed Sept. 15, 2025. It joined federal agents, local police, and the Tennessee National Guard. According to City Journal, Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers sit on each of its 42 teams and make the traffic stops that federal agents lack jurisdiction to make. Federal prosecutors charged 251 people in five months, a caseload the U.S. attorney described as roughly triple the usual.
The results look strong. Through Aug. 26, the task force had made 12,105 arrests, including 122 for homicide, and seized 2,066 illegal firearms. It says serious crime is down nearly 38% after one year. Washington tells a similar story. The U.S. attorney’s office reports that homicides fell 45%, carjackings 64% and robberies 33% in the year after the surge began, crediting “close coordination among federal agencies, local law enforcement, and the Metropolitan Police Department.” Washington isn’t a clean test, since the Constitution gives Congress exclusive legislative authority over the District, so I give Memphis more weight.
Skeptics deserve a hearing. Memphis police data show crime was falling a year before the task force arrived. The Tennessee Lookout reported that 320 of the first 854 task force arrests were on warrants, with 168 more for administrative immigration violations. Mayor Paul Young, who did not request the task force but had a choice in how it operated, says the most powerful thing it did was help “our intelligence capacity.”
Those caveats favor my case, because intelligence capacity is what coordination produces. I’d also call serving old warrants overdue housekeeping, though I’ll concede that housekeeping isn’t a homicide rate.
Marcus Aurelius wrote that people are “born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids.” Anyone who watched “The Wire” saw what happens when agencies hoard their files. Every coach knows the result when the line runs one play, and the backfield runs another. I’ve coached youth football, rugby and high school track for more than a decade, and the scoreboard never cares how hard anyone practiced.
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Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter invited mayors, city councils and governors to partner with Washington, adding that “violence is not inevitable.” Governors should take the call. St. Louis should take three steps. First, bring state resources in. The Justice Department thanks “federal, state, and local” partners but names no state agency. Second, fund the back end. Memphis arrests pushed the Shelby County jail to 3,195 inmates a day in September 2025, against a capacity of 2,400, and the district attorney said the deployment “probably could have used more planning.” St. Louis needs jail beds, judges, and prosecutors lined up before the next sweep starts. Third, publish the scoreboard monthly: homicides, nonfatal shootings, carjackings, convictions and repeat arrests.
In my business, a program that can’t show results loses its budget. Taxpayers underwrite these surges, and they’re entitled to the same discipline. Arrests earn a press conference. Lower homicide numbers give a neighborhood back its evenings. Missouri is the Show-Me State, so I’ll take the motto literally. St. Louis has the playbook and the partners. It still needs the scoreboard. Show me the shootings in March, and show me who’s still in custody.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.