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I met Tyrin “Ty” Johnson neither through a police report, nor through a press conference, nor through the carefully crafted statements of elected officials or the endless speculation that too often follows the death of a young Black man, but rather through the people who loved him most: his mother, his grandparents, his great-grandmother, his aunts, and the grief that filled the room where they gathered only days after his death. I would find out later that I’ve known one of his cousins for over 25 years.
They did not describe a headline. They described a son, a father, a nephew, a cousin, a student, a young musician whose life began with extraordinary struggle after being born prematurely and whose life ended far too soon. A legacy cut short.
Like so many Black families before them, they were forced to mourn while simultaneously defending the humanity of someone they loved. They were not asking for special treatment. They were asking for something much more fundamental. They were asking for the truth.
That truth has become increasingly difficult to find in Memphis, Tennessee.
On July 5, National Guard troops assigned to the so-called federally led Memphis Safe Task Force shot and killed 20-year-old Johnson. His family immediately called for the release of all available footage documenting what occurred. This request should not be controversial. After all, Memphis already knows what happens when official narratives are accepted before evidence is examined.
The 2023 police-perpetrated killing of Tyre Nichols permanently altered the relationship between many Memphians and law enforcement. Initial descriptions of what officers claimed had happened collapsed under the weight of video evidence that revealed something altogether different. Since then, responsible people have learned to withhold judgment — not because we reject facts, but because we insist upon seeing them.
That is why the Johnson family’s request deserves immediate action.
National Guard troops do not typically wear body cameras. But law enforcement officials have stated that the encounter with Johnson began as a response to reports of shots fired. If local law enforcement officers responded alongside National Guard personnel, then body camera footage almost certainly exists. If local officers did not respond, then the public deserves to know why armed National Guard troops were deployed to confront civilians without Memphis Police Department officers present.
Transparency is not an inconvenience. It is the minimum requirement for public trust.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s death cannot be understood apart from a larger transformation unfolding in Memphis. The Memphis Safe Task Force was launched in late 2025 as a federally led initiative that brought together federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in an aggressive campaign to reduce violent crime. Promoted as a focused effort to target violent offenders and restore public safety, the initiative has instead become a flashpoint in an ongoing debate over mass enforcement, civil liberties, racial disparities, and the increasing militarization of policing in Black communities.
When Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee first announced that hundreds of National Guard troops would be deployed to Memphis, the public was assured they would serve primarily in support roles. They would not engage in frontline policing. Questions about armed soldiers patrolling Black neighborhoods were dismissed.
Those assurances did not last.
Soon, the governor acknowledged that whether National Guard members carried weapons would be “mission-dependent.” Quietly but unmistakably, the line separating military “support” from active military engagement in civilian policing disappeared.
Today, that evolution has produced a devastating reality. A National Guard soldier has now killed a Memphis resident.
Several weeks before Tyrin Johnson’s death, I sat in a meeting with Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, U.S. Marshal Tyreece Miller, and U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant. Officials presented statistics intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Memphis Safe Task Force: More than 130,000 traffic stops. More than 25,000 citations. Approximately 10,000 arrests.
Those numbers have stayed with me — not because they demonstrate success, but because they force us to ask a different question altogether: What exactly are we measuring?
If public safety is measured primarily by stops, searches, citations, and arrests, then perhaps the task force appears successful. But if public safety is measured by public trust, constitutional rights, community well-being, and whether parents believe their children will survive encounters with the state, then the picture becomes far more complicated.
We cannot police our way into public safety. We certainly cannot militarize our way there.
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy recently argued that police officers need stronger training regarding the constitutional limits on deadly force. He is right.
But Tyrin Johnson’s death reveals an even deeper problem.
Before we debate how officers should exercise deadly force, we must ask why soldiers have been placed in the position of exercising deadly force against civilians at all. History refutes the underlying assumption that military presence produces community safety.
The timing of Johnson’s death makes that history impossible to ignore.
Only days later, Memphis marked the 10th anniversary of the historic bridge demonstration that brought thousands into the streets following the police killings of Black men across the U.S. We marched because our city understood something long before it became fashionable to say aloud: communities can be simultaneously intensely policed and still not safe.
Ten years later, that contradiction remains; perhaps it has deepened. The names have changed. The uniforms have changed. The rhetoric has changed. Many of the elected officials have changed.
But many Black neighborhoods continue to experience extraordinary levels of state surveillance while still lacking the investments that actually produce safety: stable housing, quality schools, meaningful employment, accessible health care, trauma services, and neighborhood infrastructure.
Memphis is increasingly becoming a proving ground for a model of governance that extends far beyond our city. Under the banner of “public safety,” military resources, federal agencies, and local law enforcement are converging in predominantly Black communities with extraordinary powers and remarkably little public accountability.
That should concern every American, because what is normalized in Memphis today may become commonplace elsewhere tomorrow.
The Johnson family deserves answers. Memphis deserves transparency.
The nation deserves an honest conversation about why militarized policing has become the default response to social problems that neither soldiers nor police were ever intended to solve.
I left Tyrin Johnson’s family with one overwhelming impression: Their deepest request was not revenge. It was not politics. It was not even certainty. It was truth and transparency. That is a modest request.If we cannot tell the truth about how Tyrin Johnson died, then we will never tell the truth about what Memphis has become. And if we cannot tell the truth about Memphis, we will have learned nothing from the last decade except how to perfect the very systems we once promised to change.
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