Vera Says Federal Law Enforcement Is “Out of Control.” The Memphis Crime Numbers Say Otherwise.

Vera’s latest attack on federal enforcement erases crime victims, buries a 40 percent crime drop in its own showcase city, and never mentions the nine-figure federal contract riding on the outcome.

On July 17, the Vera Institute of Justice published a piece titled “Out-of-Control Federal Law Enforcement Is Undermining Public Safety.” It was written by Alex Pareene, a career political blogger from Gawker and The New Republic who now carries the title “Senior Writer” at Vera. Keep that in mind as you read it. This is not research. There is not one piece of original data in it. It is an opinion column wearing a research institute’s letterhead — and it is built on omission from the first sentence to the last.

Vera’s argument is simple: four people were shot and killed by federal agents this month — two in Memphis, one in Houston, one in Biddeford, Maine — and therefore the administration’s crime and immigration enforcement is “endangering the country rather than delivering safety.” The prescription that follows is the same one Vera always writes: pull back enforcement and spend the money on social programs instead.

Every death deserves a full and honest accounting. I will say that plainly, and I will come back to it. But an organization that puts the word “justice” in its name owes the public the whole record. Vera did not provide it. So I will.

The Numbers Vera Buried

Vera built its article around Memphis. What Vera never tells you — not in one sentence, not in one footnote — is what happened to crime in Memphis after the Memphis Safe Task Force arrived in September 2025.

Memphis Police Department data shows Part I crime — the most serious offenses — down nearly 40 percent year over year, with murders, rapes, aggravated assaults, robberies, vehicle thefts, and burglaries all falling. The city’s homicide clearance rate now stands at 81 percent, up from 40 percent in 2023. Homicides are down 53 percent compared to 2025.

The task force itself has made more than 10,000 arrests, including 92 for homicide and 105 for sex offenses. It has taken 1,708 illegal firearms off the streets, arrested more than 1,000 known gang members, and located 154 missing children. By the U.S. Marshals Service’s own accounting, murder is down 39 percent, sexual assault down 43 percent, robbery down nearly 60 percent, and motor vehicle theft down nearly 70 percent.

And you do not have to take Washington’s word for it. Memphis Mayor Paul Young — a Democrat — said the task force “amplified our efforts,” noting that the city’s crime reductions climbed from roughly 27 percent to over 40 percent after it arrived. Bill Gibbons, who leads the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, credited the task force with helping sustain the decline.

That is the record in the city Vera chose as its centerpiece. Vera’s headline says federal enforcement is undermining public safety in a city where public safety just improved more in ten months than it had in a generation. When your thesis cannot survive your own case study, you do not have a thesis. You have a talking point.

The Shooting Vera Misrepresents

Vera presents the death of 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson as soldiers gunning down a young man in the street. Here is what the investigative record actually says. Memphis police were responding to shots-fired calls just before 4 a.m. on July 5 when officers spotted an armed man carrying a handgun. He fled on foot. Police say Johnson then turned toward the Guardsmen while armed, and two soldiers fired. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Johnson had reportedly fired shots in the area before the pursuit began.

Then there is this — and it matters. Vera claims that under this administration the era of investigations and fact-finding after law enforcement shootings is over, that federal agents now operate with complete impunity. Yet the TBI has opened an independent investigation into the Johnson shooting at the request of the Shelby County District Attorney. An independent state investigation, requested by a local prosecutor, is underway right now in the very case Vera leads with. Vera declared accountability dead in an article whose own lead example proves it alive.

The Victims Vera Erased

Read Vera’s article and search for the word “victim.” You will not find it. Not once.

For years I have made one consistent criticism of the Vera Institute: it writes about the justice system as if crime has no victims. This article is the purest example yet. Four deaths during enforcement encounters are treated as a national indictment, while the thousands of Memphians who were not robbed, not assaulted, and not murdered this year — because violent offenders were taken off the street — are invisible. The 154 missing children the task force located do not appear. The families who finally received a homicide arrest, in a city where the clearance rate doubled, do not appear. In Vera’s accounting, the only lives that count are the ones lost during enforcement. The lives saved by enforcement count for nothing.

The Violence Vera Ignores

Vera describes federal agents firing into vehicles as if these events happen in a vacuum. What Vera never mentions is the violence directed at the agents themselves. According to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers were assaulted 275 times during the first year of this administration, compared with 19 over the same period the year before. DHS reports 66 vehicular attacks against ICE officers, compared with 2 the prior year — cars used as weapons against agents — along with a massive surge in death threats against officers and their families. A sniper opened fire on the Dallas ICE facility, killing two detainees.

Those are DHS’s figures, and reporters have pressed the department to release the underlying data — fair enough; it should. But even the skeptics who searched federal court records concede that assaults on federal officers have risen. Context is not a defense of any individual shooting. But an article about agents’ use of force that omits the documented rise in force used against agents is not analysis. It is advocacy.

Follow the Money

Here is the part Vera never discloses in its immigration writing, so I will. In 2022, Vera landed a federal contract worth $171.7 million — expandable to as much as $983 million through March 2027 — to provide legal services to unaccompanied migrant children. In April 2025, the Department of Justice terminated five of Vera’s federal grants.

So when you read a Vera attack on this administration’s immigration enforcement, understand what you are reading: the product of an organization whose revenue depends on the immigration caseload, publishing under a campaign banner it literally titles “Justice in the Age of Trump,” after losing federal grant money under this administration. That is not a neutral research institute weighing evidence. That is an aggrieved federal contractor with a nine-figure stake in the policy fight — and honest disclosure would require saying so every single time it publishes on the subject.

The Tell

The article’s closing prescription gives the game away. Vera’s answer to violent crime is to pull back enforcement and fund schools, jobs, housing, treatment, and “violence prevention.” Memphis lived under that framework for decades while it became one of the most dangerous cities in America. What changed in the last ten months was not a housing program. It was enforcement — sustained, coordinated, and unapologetic — working alongside local police. Schools and jobs matter, and every serious public safety advocate supports them. But they are not a substitute for arresting the small share of offenders who, as Memphis’s own mayor points out, drive the overwhelming majority of the crime.

Where Vera Has a Point — and Where It Doesn’t

I will give Vera what it is owed. Witnesses in Houston have disputed the government’s initial account of the shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and the Washington Post reports that DHS agents have fired into vehicles at least 17 times this term — a tactic most police departments abandoned decades ago for good reason. Those incidents deserve full, independent investigation, and the tactical questions deserve straight answers from DHS. Public safety and accountability are not opposites. I have spent 35 years in this profession saying exactly that: liberty and safety rise together, or they fall together.

But that is precisely why Vera’s article fails. If you genuinely care about accountability, you tell the whole truth — about the crime drop, about the armed suspect, about the active investigation, about the violence against officers, and about your own financial interest. Vera told none of it. It counted four deaths and hid ten thousand arrests, a doubled clearance rate, and 154 recovered children.

“Out of control” is a strong charge. Vera should be careful where it points it. An organization that publishes a public safety indictment while suppressing every public safety result is not a watchdog. It is exactly what it claims to be describing: out of control.

About the Author Mike Morrison is the 2026 PBUS National Bail Agent of the Year and President of the Mississippi Bail Agents Association. With more than 35 years of hands-on experience as a licensed bail agent and owner of Mike Morrison Bail Bonding Company in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he brings real-world insight to America’s most important conversations on criminal justice, pretrial policy, public safety, and good governance.

Morrison writes and speaks from the front lines — courtrooms, jails, and communities — rather than from theory. His commentary on policy, taxes, justice reform, and the daily realities facing working Americans has earned more than one million views across social media in 2026 alone. He regularly presents on bail policy and professional standards at the Mississippi Judicial College and leads ethics and training programs for bail professionals nationwide.

Independent, plain-spoken, and grounded in practical experience, Mike is committed to clear-eyed analysis that cuts through political noise — whether the topic is public safety, government accountability, or the true cost of policy decisions on Mississippi families and the nation.

© 2026 Mike Morrison. All rights reserved.