Fourth person killed by agents from Trump’s Memphis anticrime taskforce

Federal agents killed a man at a Memphis motel on Wednesday morning in a Drug Enforcement Administration operation with the Memphis Safe Task Force, the fourth officer-involved death since the anticrime initiative began in September.

Donald Trump established the federal taskforce by executive order last year, amid a surge of troops and federal law enforcement agents to Democratic-run cities that he claimed were overrun with crime. All four of the deaths have occurred in the last two months.

Authorities said agents from the taskforce surrounded an extended-stay motel on Poplar Avenue, about 11 miles (18km) east of downtown Memphis, in support of a DEA operation.

“Federal and local law enforcement officers were attempting to serve a warrant on a wanted fugitive facing felony drug charges out of Shelby county,” said a spokesperson for the US Marshals Service, which is the lead agency for the taskforce. “After issuing numerous verbal commands for the individual to surrender, officers made a forced entry into the building. Additional commands were given for the individual to exit. During the encounter, the individual pointed a handgun at members of the Memphis Safe Task Force. Taskforce members responded to the immediate threat by discharging their firearms.”

The Tennessee bureau of investigation is investigating the shooting. Police have not yet identified the deceased.

Last September, when Trump signed the executive order, Memphis had among the highest rates of violent crime of large cities in the United States. However, violence had fallen sharply in the year preceding Trump’s order, as it had been in many cities as the pandemic crime spike subsided.

Nonetheless, Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, acting in concert with the president, activated the Tennessee national guard, which has been patrolling Memphis streets for 10 months. Local activists have challenged the deployment in state and federal court, to no avail.

Early on Monday morning, national guard soldiers fatally shot 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson as he was being pursued by the Memphis police department following reports of shots fired near Ida B Wells and Gayoso avenues downtown.

That followed the 21 May death of Jonah Neal, 25, when taskforce officers responded to a report of an armed man threatening to harm himself at a home. Police said they found Neal with several weapons inside the home. A homeland security special agent shot him, according to the police.

And on 13 May, Memphis Safe Task Force agents shot and killed 41-year-old Darrin Pigram while serving an arrest warrant at a Burger King located in Memphis’s Frayser neighborhood.