A Memphis pizzeria is under fire after its owner proudly acknowledged turning away four uniformed members of the Tennessee National Guard and declared he has no regrets about the decision.
The incident occurred at Tambolis Pizza & Pasta in Midtown, where four members of President Trumps Memphis Safe Task Forcesimply looking to eat while on dutywere refused service, according to The Gateway Pundit. Restaurant owner Miles Tamboli later confirmed that he personally ordered the refusal and then doubled down in a lengthy public statement that framed his actions as a principled stand against the Guards deployment in the city.
Tamboli insisted that his refusal was rooted in love for his country and his city, even as critics accused him of disrespecting the very men and women risking their lives to protect both. On Saturday night we declined to serve four uniformed members of the Memphis Safe Task Force, and I stand behind that decision completely, he said in a statement to Action News 5, making clear he had no intention of apologizing.
He went on to claim that Memphis was already improving before federal and state authorities launched the task force, dismissing the role of the Guard and federal partners in driving down crime. I love this country and I love this city, and that is exactly why I made this call. I want Memphis to be safe. Every business owner does. And the honest truth is that Memphis was already getting safer before this Task Force ever arrived, Tamboli asserted.
Tamboli cited crime statistics to argue that local efforts alone were responsible for progress, not the presence of uniformed troops and federal officers. Crime was at a 25-year low through the first eight months of 2025, according to the Memphis Police Departments own data, later confirmed by an independent Tennessee Bureau of Investigation audit. That progress was earned by the people of this city. It was not delivered by soldiers, he claimed, dismissing the Guards contribution.
In his telling, the Memphis Safe Task Force has made daily life more difficult, not safer, for ordinary residents trying to go about their business. What the Task Force has actually done is make this city harder to live in. Its own records show that the overwhelming majority of its arrests began with routine traffic stops, not violent crime. Families in this city are now afraid to drive to work, afraid to take their kids to school, afraid to be seen, he argued.
Tamboli further alleged that the deployment has disrupted education and heightened tensions between citizens and authorities, pointing to a controversial shooting now under investigation. Our own schools reported that fear drove children to stop showing up to class. And this month a 20-year-old Memphian named Tyrin Johnson was shot and killed by National Guard troops during a foot chase, with no body camera footage and no answers for his family. None of that makes us safer. It makes us less safe, and it does the most damage to the people who were already struggling, he said.
He framed his stance as pro-safety, but defined safety in a way that excludes a robust law-enforcement and security presence, especially when it involves military personnel. Being pro-safety means telling the truth about what actually protects a community, and it is not soldiers trained for combat doing the work of police officers, Tamboli said, suggesting that the Guards very training makes them unfit for the mission.
Tamboli argued that deploying troops in domestic policing roles is inherently dangerous both for civilians and for the Guardsmen themselves, who he says are being misused. That mismatch is dangerous for the people of Memphis and dangerous for the troops themselves, who were sent here to do a job they were never trained for, he continued, casting the mission as a violation of American founding principles.
Invoking the nations founding documents, Tamboli tried to place his refusal to serve the Guardsmen in a patriotic tradition of skepticism toward standing armies. The founders wrote their objection to standing armies among the people into the Declaration of Independence itself, because they understood that a free country does not let the military police its own citizens. That principle is older than any political party, and I am not willing to abandon it because it became inconvenient, he said.
He also noted that he had already aligned himself with other like-minded business owners in opposing the task force, portraying his actions as both moral and patriotic. Months ago I joined dozens of other local businesses in a public commitment to stand against the military policing our streets, an act of patriotism and conscience both, and I would make the same decision tomorrow, Tamboli declared, signaling that he would again deny service to uniformed troops.
As public outrage grew, Tambolis father, Roy, stepped forward to defend his sons conduct and to echo his criticism of the National Guards role. I support my son Miles at Tambolis, who explained his opinion here: he wrote, before quoting his sons rationale at length.
Roy highlighted Miless personal relationships with Guardsmen while still endorsing the decision to use them as a political target inside his restaurant. I have friends in the NG and I have respect for them. They do really important work in national defense and disaster responseand thats what theyre trained for. In a defense capacity, they are trained to kill, not to de-escalate. Thats why they shouldnt be here. Turning them away is a protest against that, not against them as people. At the end of the day, Im sorry those boys didnt get their pizza, but Im sure they will be okay.
He then pivoted to a broader critique of social media, even as the backlash against the restaurant spread largely through those same platforms. I also understand that without social media hatred, the tech giants would not be billionaires. Internet addiction is the new plantation that many are struggling to escape from, Roy added, blaming online culture for the intensity of the response.
While Tamboli portrays the task force as a threat, federal and state authorities have credited it with dramatic gains in public safety that many residents, especially in high-crime neighborhoods, have welcomed. The multi-agency Memphis Safe Task Force, involving the Tennessee National Guard, U.S. Marshals, and federal partners, has surpassed 10,000 arrests, seized more than 1,700 illegal firearms, located missing children, and driven sharp drops in violent crime across the city.
Homicides, robberies, carjackings, and overall crime have fallen significantly under the deployment, even as Democrats and local activists have fought the operation in courtrooms and city halls. These four young Guardsmen are the same type of heroes who recently fatally shot an armed thug during a pursuit in Memphis, the kind of criminals who actually make the city unsafe.
Yet in Midtown, a restaurant owner chose to treat these uniformed Americans as pariahs rather than protectors, barring them from a simple meal while on duty. Now his father is publicly defending that choice by saying the troops are trained to kill, a stark reminder of how deeply some on the left distrust the very institutions that stand between law-abiding citizens and the chaos of unchecked crime.
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