Tea
City in Lincoln County, 6,786 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.
A department is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decision city-or-town-is-its-police-department). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.
Where it sits
- County
- Lincoln County
- People
- 6,786
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Tea follows South Dakota law on arrests, release, and courts; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.
- Who decides release first
A clerk magistrate, a court clerk who is not a lawyer, usually sets the first bond or grants personal recognizance from the presiding judge's fine and bond schedule, for felonies as well as misdemeanors. Murder, first-degree manslaughter, and kidnapping go to a circuit or magistrate judge. Domestic abuse bond is set by a magistrate judge or circuit judge.
SDCL 16-12C-10SDCL 16-2-21UJS Fine and Bond Schedule for Use by Clerk Magistrates- Time to see a judge
Police must take an arrested person before the nearest available committing magistrate without unnecessary delay. South Dakota law sets no number of hours.
SDCL 23A-4-1- Money bail
South Dakota courts may set money bond, and clerk magistrates set it from a dollar range in the bond schedule.
SDCL 16-12C-10UJS Fine and Bond Schedule for Use by Clerk Magistrates
Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Some of this is medium confidence and still being checked. The 8-year circuit term is from the State Bar page; the constitution page would not render. Whether jailers apply the bond schedule with no clerk magistrate is unknown. The state's attorney's term length and the 2023 state Office of Indigent Legal Services' role were not checked.
Crime
Offenses reported by Tea Police Department, Tea's own department. The county sheriff and state police may answer calls here too; their offenses are on their own pages.
The crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | South Dakota |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | 11 | 14 | 8 | 11 | 14 | 154 | 373 |
| Murder | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 3.9 | ||||
| Rape | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 56 | |
| Robbery | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 23 | |||||
| Aggravated assault | 9 | 13 | 8 | 8 | 10 | 128 | 290 |
| Property crime | 95 | 117 | 112 | 99 | 70 | 1,310 | 1,695 |
| Burglary | 8 | 13 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 120 | 235 |
| Larceny | 78 | 84 | 91 | 89 | 55 | 1,055 | 1,235 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 9 | 20 | 12 | 3 | 7 | 136 | 225 |
| Arson | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 7.3 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | South Dakota |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 175 | 216 | 292 | 291 | 295 | 3,372 | 3,675 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 50 | 40 | 54 | 52 | 53 | 662 | 1,228 |
| Vandalism | 23 | 42 | 30 | 28 | 15 | 367 | 533 |
| Fraud | 8 | 19 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 165 | 224 |
| Drug abuse violations | 68 | 92 | 168 | 175 | 194 | 1,852 | 1,326 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 6 | 3 | 8 | 10 | 6 | 88 | 112 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 36 | |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 4 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 56 | 62 |
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 4 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 56 | 66 |
| Other Group A offenses | 10 | 10 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 109 | 60 |
| Human trafficking (not in the total) | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 0.7 |
Offenses Tea Police Department reported to the FBI in incident detail (NIBRS), each year, the second table by the arrest class each offense falls in. Per 100k: offenses per 100,000 people the department polices, 2021 to 2025 added together, beside South Dakota's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
Source: FBI NIBRS national master files, each agency's offenses and the FBI's population for it. South Dakota: the crime index: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, CrimeDB's chosen value per year (the state page's figures); outside it: FBI NIBRS, agencies that sent incident detail.