Tennessee authorities are investigating the second fatal shooting in four days by a member of the federal task force dedicated to confronting crime in Memphis.
The shootings are likely to further exacerbate tensions within the city, which has been torn over the presence of hundreds of federal agents since October and their aggressive approach to targeting crime.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday that the shooting involved a Drug Enforcement Administration agent with a team of agents trying to serve an arrest warrant at a Memphis hotel on Wednesday morning.
A spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service said agents forced their way into the hotel room after commands to open the door were ignored. A man inside pointed a handgun at the group, and the agent shot and killed the man, the spokesman said. The state bureau said it would investigate the shooting, but did not identify the man or the agent involved.
“The Memphis Safe Task Force will remain in Memphis since dangerous criminals are still on the street,” Brady McCarron, the marshals spokesman, said. “Attempted violence against law enforcement will never be tolerated.”
The task force, he added, “has made the city of Memphis safer by arresting criminals, driving down crime, and locating missing children.”
Steve Mulroy, the district attorney for Shelby County, which includes Memphis, also asked the state bureau to investigate a fatal shooting days earlier. In that episode, on Sunday, two National Guard members fired on Tyrin Johnson, 20, killing him, according to the bureau, among several shootings in nine states during the Fourth of July weekend.
At least two other people have been killed after altercations involving agents working with the Memphis task force.
While the Trump administration has pulled federal agents and National Guard troops back from other Democratic-led cities, personnel remain in both Memphis and Washington. The federal government has outsize power over the nation’s capital, while Republican leaders in Tennessee have embraced the groundswell of law enforcement after President Trump signed an executive order establishing the task force in September.
Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, has allowed Memphis police officers to work in tandem with federal agents and State Highway Patrol troopers, though he expressed some discomfort with the National Guard deployment. More than 2,000 arrests have been made and hundreds of firearms have been confiscated since the task force arrived last fall.
Some Memphis residents have welcomed the task force, expressing weariness and frustration with the high crime rates that have long plagued the city. Others, however, have accused the agents of using aggressive tactics and causing more fear and distrust in a majority-Black city with a painful history of discriminatory policing.
There is also an ongoing lawsuit against leaders of the task force, accusing agents of retaliating against efforts to document the task force’s arrests and detainment of both residents and undocumented immigrants.
“Every Memphian deserves to feel safe and public safety depends not only on reducing violence but also on maintaining trust between government and the communities it serves,” Raumesh Akbari and London Lamar, Democratic state senators, said in a statement after Mr. Johnson’s death early Sunday. “That trust is strengthened through transparency, accountability and an independent review of the facts.”
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