Following President Donald Trump’s controversial announcement that his administration would be deploying a task force including the National Guard, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies to Memphis, Tennessee to fight high rates of crime, lawmakers and experts say that the measure is only a stopgap solution to a problem that finds its roots in absent fathers and lack of biblical morals.

On Monday, Trump announced that the task force would use the same “strategies and principles” of his August executive order deploying the National Guard and other federal law enforcement agencies to Washington, D.C. Memphis is known for having some of the highest violent crime rates in the country, with FBI data from 2024 showing that the city has “some of the highest per capita rates of murder, robbery, and aggravated assault, and property crimes such as burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft, in the country,” as the president’s memoranda noted.

According to some reports, Memphis residents are largely split in their support of the law enforcement surge. Some say that the crime problem in the southern city is so bad that “anything will help,” while others say National Guard soldiers may not be equipped and trained properly for law enforcement and that a military presence will cause law-abiding citizens to think twice before going out at night.

Meanwhile, lawmakers from the state say that long-time Democratic control of Memphis has not helped its sky-high crime rates.

“I think by the measures of crime and other areas of civic measurement, it’s not going well,” Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) contended during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday. “Democrats have controlled every level of Memphis government for 30 years. And I think we have to give them a failing grade, and particularly when it comes to the safety and security of Memphians and the desirability of the Bluff City, given the crime problem that we see there.”

Rose further called for an overhaul of how law enforcement is conducted in Democratic cities in order to stem the tide of rising crime. “[W]e saw it proven long ago that a ‘broken windows’ policy when it comes to crime is what works,” he observed. “… [I]f we’re going to live together in a civil society, then we’ve got to have laws, and those laws have to be enforced. We can’t look at macro measures of [who’s] committing the crimes and somehow conclude that justice is not being equally dispensed when the crimes are not being equally committed.”

As for the root cause of high crime rates in cities like Memphis, studies show that minors who grow up without a father in the house are significantly more likely to “suffer from psychosocial development issues, live in poverty, drop out of school, engage in school violence, abuse substances, and enter the juvenile justice system.” Notably, Memphis has one of the highest rates of single-parent households in the country, with some areas of the city having 80% of households without a father.

“[The] foundations of Western civilization and Christian faith [have been] degraded in Memphis,” Rose argued. “Too many fatherless children [are] growing up in homes where they’re not getting the influence of a two-parent household. For those of us who experienced that growing up, we know how powerful that can be [in] helping you to find yourself and to have a basis for understanding the world and knowing your place in it. And that’s a problem in Memphis, Tennessee. … [A] lot of that is around faith and having a religious understanding of your place in the world. The faith of this country is not where it should be, and faith in Memphis is not where it should be. … [S]o the longer term solutions in Memphis are not about stopping crime. They’re about changing the hearts and minds of Memphians.”

Rose went on to call for churches and faith communities to be epicenters for a revival in order to reverse rising violence and lawlessness.

“As is true for the nation, I think it’s equally true for Memphis or more so — we need a revival of faith in Memphis, Tennessee, and a revival of the values that are fundamental to the Christian faith,” he declared. “… [T]he Founders correctly observed that democracy, the Republic could only survive if we had a moral people. … [W]e’ve seen society degrade, we’ve seen morality brought into question.”