The call came at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. A property manager in downtown Nashville needed every available guard his security company could send. Protesters had gathered near the state Capitol, and windows were breaking on Broadway. By midnight, the Nashville courthouse was on fire.
Sixty miles to the east, nothing happened. Murfreesboro was quiet. So was Clarksville. Chattanooga saw small, peaceful demonstrations. Knoxville the same. The protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death on May 25 hit Tennessee unevenly, concentrating their intensity in Nashville and Memphis while smaller cities watched from a distance.
For Tennessee’s security industry, the last week of May and the first days of June became a crash course in working during civil unrest. Most companies had never dealt with anything like it. The pandemic was still raging. Now this.
Nashville: The Night of May 30
Saturday, May 30 started with peaceful marches through downtown Nashville. Thousands of people demonstrated against police violence and racial injustice. By most accounts, the daytime protests were exactly what the organizers intended: loud, visible, and nonviolent.
After dark, the situation changed. A smaller group broke away from the main protest and targeted businesses along Broadway and near the Capitol. The Historic Nashville Courthouse was set on fire. Windows were smashed at multiple downtown businesses. Police deployed tear gas and rubber bullets near Legislative Plaza.
Mayor John Cooper declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew starting at 10 p.m. Governor Lee activated the Tennessee National Guard. By Sunday morning, Nashville’s downtown looked like a different city. Plywood covered storefronts. Glass littered sidewalks. National Guard Humvees idled at intersections.
Security companies responded to an avalanche of calls. Commercial clients who’d never considered overnight security suddenly needed it. Property managers who’d reduced their guard coverage during the pandemic reversed course and demanded full staffing. The phone calls weren’t polite requests; they were panicked demands.
“I got 14 calls between 11 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday,” said the owner of a Nashville security firm. “Every one of them wanted guards immediately. Not tomorrow. Not Monday morning. Right now. I had six available guards. I could’ve placed 40.”
Memphis: Tense and Personal
Memphis experienced its own protests, and the dynamic there was different from Nashville in ways that reflect the city’s particular history with race, policing, and economic inequality.
The Memphis demonstrations began on May 28, three days after Floyd’s death, with gatherings at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The symbolism was impossible to miss. Protesters gathered on the same ground where the civil rights movement suffered one of its greatest losses, demanding accountability for a death that echoed the violence King fought against.
Memphis protests were largely peaceful, though there were incidents. On May 31, confrontations between protesters and police near the Interstate 55 bridge led to arrests and use of tear gas. A AutoZone store was damaged. Some Beale Street businesses were vandalized. Mayor Jim Strickland imposed a curfew on May 31, following Nashville’s lead.
The security industry’s response in Memphis was shaped by the city’s existing security infrastructure. Memphis already has one of the highest per-capita rates of private security employment in the Southeast, driven by its chronic crime concerns. Many downtown and Midtown businesses already had security contracts. What changed was the scope of coverage they needed.
Businesses that normally had a single guard during business hours wanted armed guards 24/7. Restaurants and bars on Beale Street, already closed due to COVID, hired guards to prevent vandalism during the protests. Property owners along Union Avenue, Poplar Avenue, and in the Medical District called security companies looking for immediate coverage.
The Board-Up Economy
Within 48 hours of the first Nashville protests, a secondary economy materialized. Board-up crews, plywood suppliers, and security companies formed an informal supply chain responding to business owners’ fear of property damage.
Plywood prices spiked. A sheet of 4x8 plywood that cost $30 in normal times was selling for $50 to $75 during the first week of June. Contractors who normally build houses were instead screwing plywood over storefront windows from Germantown to Hillsboro Village in Nashville, and from Downtown to East Memphis.
Security companies found themselves embedded in this board-up economy, providing armed guards to watch over freshly boarded businesses. The contracts were short-term, typically three to seven days, with daily rates rather than monthly billing. Guards stood outside businesses with plywood-covered windows, serving as a visible deterrent.
The money was good. Short-term crisis contracts command premium rates: $30 to $45 per hour for armed guards, compared to $25 to $35 under normal contract pricing. Some Nashville companies billed more than $50,000 in the first week of June from protest-related security work alone.
Not everyone was comfortable with the arrangement. A guard supervisor in Memphis told me his company turned down several requests because the clients wanted guards who would confront protesters, not just protect property. “We’re not a militia,” he said. “Our job is to observe, report, and protect the client’s building. We don’t engage with protesters. We don’t take sides. Some clients didn’t want to hear that.”
Caught Between Roles
The protests created an identity crisis for parts of the security industry. Security companies exist to protect property and people. During civil unrest sparked by police violence against a Black man, “protecting property” carries political implications that the industry doesn’t typically confront.
Guards standing in front of boarded-up businesses while predominantly Black protesters marched past them faced a complicated moment. Many of those guards are Black themselves. In Memphis especially, where the security guard workforce is majority Black and the protests centered on racial justice, the tension was deeply personal.
“My company told me to report to a post guarding a shopping center in East Memphis,” one guard told me. “I did my job. I stood there. Meanwhile, my cousin was marching downtown. He texted me a picture from the protest. I was wearing a uniform protecting a strip mall while my family was in the streets fighting for something that matters to me too.”
Security companies, as a rule, don’t have public positions on social justice issues. They serve clients. They enforce post orders. They stay neutral. That neutrality felt different during the last week of May than it does during a normal Wednesday night shift. Several Memphis and Nashville companies issued internal memos reminding guards to remain professional and apolitical while on duty. Whether those memos addressed the emotional reality of the moment is debatable.
The National Guard Complication
Governor Lee’s deployment of the National Guard to Nashville added another layer of complexity for security companies. Guard troops took positions at government buildings, key intersections, and some commercial areas. Their presence raised questions about jurisdiction, rules of engagement, and coordination with private security.
In theory, the National Guard handles public safety while private security handles private property. In practice, the lines blurred. Guards at businesses near the Capitol found themselves in proximity to military personnel and law enforcement officers operating under very different authorities and rules of engagement. A private security guard who observes a crime reports it to police. A National Guard soldier in a civil disturbance has different protocols entirely.
No major incidents between private security and the National Guard were reported in Tennessee, which is a credit to both groups. The potential for confusion, though, was real. One Nashville security company manager told me he spent Sunday morning on the phone with Metro Nashville Police, clarifying where his guards were posted so there wouldn’t be a misunderstanding between his armed guards and the military personnel deployed a block away.
Curfews and Operational Challenges
The curfews imposed in Nashville and Memphis created practical problems for security companies. Guards traveling to and from posts during curfew hours needed documentation proving their essential worker status and their assignment details. Not every company had prepared this paperwork.
“I had a guard get stopped by Metro Police at 11:30 p.m. on his way to a midnight shift,” said a Nashville operations manager. “He had his company ID and his post orders, which satisfied the officer. My other company didn’t have post orders printed for their guards. Two of their guys got detained for an hour before their supervisor came down with documentation.”
The lesson: keep written post orders and essential worker letters with every guard on every shift. This should have been standard practice since the pandemic started in March, yet some companies still hadn’t formalized it by June.
Insurance Implications
Civil unrest triggers specific clauses in commercial property insurance policies, and those clauses affect security companies indirectly. Clients whose properties were damaged during the protests are filing insurance claims, and insurers are asking whether security was present, what level of coverage was contracted, and whether the security company performed its duties.
For companies that were contracted to provide security at properties that were damaged, the post-incident review process is uncomfortable. Did the guard follow post orders? Did they report the incident promptly? Were they even on site when the damage occurred, or had they abandoned post? These questions carry liability implications.
At least two Tennessee security companies have already been contacted by their clients’ insurers requesting incident reports and guard activity logs from the nights of May 30 and 31. The companies that maintained proper documentation will come through this fine. The ones that didn’t are in for a difficult summer.
Looking at the Industry After the First Week of June
The protests of late May and early June will leave marks on Tennessee’s security industry that go beyond the immediate financial impact of crisis contracts and board-up jobs.
First, civil unrest preparedness is now a real planning category. Companies that had never thought about protest response protocols now recognize the gap. Expect training programs to expand to include civil disturbance scenarios, de-escalation during protests, and coordination with law enforcement during curfews.
Second, the question of what security companies are for, and who they serve, won’t disappear. The industry positions itself as a partner to communities. Being seen as an arm of property protection during a racial justice movement complicates that positioning. Companies with diverse workforces and genuine community ties will handle this better than companies that treat their guards as interchangeable units.
Third, the financial opportunity is real and uncomfortable. Crisis contracts pay well. Companies that can deploy armed guards on short notice during civil unrest will be in demand. Whether that demand is something the industry should celebrate or simply meet with professionalism is a question each company will answer differently.
Tennessee’s security industry has dealt with a pandemic, an economic shutdown, and now civil unrest in the span of 90 days. The guards who’ve worked through all of it deserve more than a paycheck. They deserve recognition for doing hard work during a period when the definition of “hard” kept changing.
June is three days old. Nobody’s predicting what comes next. After the last three months, that’s probably wise.