Bluff City
City in Sullivan County, 2,225 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Sullivan 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
- Sullivan County
- People
- 2,225
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Bluff City follows Tennessee law on arrests, release, and courts; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.
- Who decides release first
A magistrate sets bail first. In many counties that is an appointed judicial commissioner who need not be a lawyer; in others it is a general sessions judge or, when no judge can come within three hours, a court clerk. A defendant can appeal a commissioner's decision to the court.
Tenn. Code Ann. 40-11-106Tenn. Code Ann. 40-1-111Tenn. Code Ann. 40-11-150- Time to see a judge
A person arrested must be taken "without unnecessary delay" before the nearest magistrate of the county. The rule sets no number of hours.
Tenn. R. Crim. P. 5(a)- Money bail
Magistrates and judges may set money bail, and the sheriff or a judicial commissioner accepts bonds from approved commercial bonding companies.
Tenn. Code Ann. 40-11-106
Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Some of this is medium confidence and still being checked. trial_selection is "mixed" because Ballotpedia says trial judges run in partisan elections unless a county opts for nonpartisan ones; no statute was read for this. Which counties use judicial commissioners versus judges or clerks, and whether any county uses a misdemeanor bail schedule, was not confirmed.
Crime
Offenses reported by Bluff City Police Department, Bluff City'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 | Tennessee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | 2 | 7 | 3 | 9 | 10 | 395 | 594 |
| Murder | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 8.5 | |||||
| Rape | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 40 | |||
| Robbery | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 61 | |||||
| Aggravated assault | 2 | 7 | 3 | 8 | 9 | 367 | 485 |
| Property crime | 13 | 21 | 39 | 31 | 27 | 1,605 | 2,099 |
| Burglary | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 271 | |
| Larceny | 10 | 12 | 36 | 27 | 20 | 1,292 | 1,482 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 2 | 6 | 4 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 347 | |
| Arson | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021* | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | Tennessee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 64 | 45 | 138 | 124 | 139 | 6,067 | 3,956 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 6 | 9 | 12 | 27 | 29 | 1,047 | 1,434 |
| Vandalism | 8 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 326 | 588 |
| Fraud | 3 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 367 | 392 |
| Drug abuse violations | 45 | 24 | 98 | 70 | 80 | 3,700 | 1,080 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 1 | 6 | 8 | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 215 | |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 1 | 2 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 30 | ||
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 69 |
| Embezzlement | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 25 | |||
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 1 | 1 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 44 | ||
| Prostitution and commercialized vice | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 4.6 | ||||
| Other Group A offenses | 3 | 1 | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 73 |
Offenses Bluff City 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, 2022 to 2025 added together, full years only, beside Tennessee's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
* 2021: reported for part of the year only, so the count is short and the year is left out of the rate.
Source: FBI NIBRS national master files, each agency's offenses and the FBI's population for it. Tennessee: 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.