Cookeville
City in Putnam County, 36,088 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Putnam 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
- Putnam County
- People
- 36,088
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Cookeville 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 Cookeville Police Department, Cookeville'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 | 128 | 120 | 89 | 109 | 101 | 299 | 610 |
| Murder | 3 | 6 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 8.8 | |||
| Rape | 21 | 10 | 6 | 21 | 24 | 45 | 41 |
| Robbery | 12 | 10 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 20 | 63 |
| Aggravated assault | 95 | 97 | 69 | 85 | 74 | 230 | 498 |
| Property crime | 1,004 | 1,003 | 767 | 620 | 564 | 2,167 | 2,131 |
| Burglary | 93 | 108 | 70 | 56 | 47 | 205 | 284 |
| Larceny | 790 | 792 | 621 | 508 | 469 | 1,741 | 1,510 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 121 | 103 | 76 | 56 | 48 | 221 | 337 |
| Arson | 3 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 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 | 2,152 | 1,593 | 1,302 | 1,497 | 1,535 | 4,422 | 4,023 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 518 | 470 | 455 | 439 | 454 | 1,279 | 1,439 |
| Vandalism | 299 | 243 | 171 | 139 | 136 | 541 | 603 |
| Fraud | 217 | 179 | 154 | 203 | 147 | 493 | 390 |
| Drug abuse violations | 940 | 551 | 385 | 553 | 625 | 1,672 | 1,125 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 51 | 27 | 17 | 23 | 25 | 78 | 218 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 14 | 16 | 15 | 7 | 6 | 32 | 32 |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 66 | 59 | 52 | 61 | 43 | 154 | 69 |
| Embezzlement | 6 | 10 | 5 | 10 | 11 | 23 | 25 |
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 20 | 17 | 24 | 30 | 36 | 70 | 44 |
| Prostitution and commercialized vice | 1 | 4 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 4.8 | ||
| Other Group A offenses | 20 | 21 | 20 | 31 | 52 | 79 | 71 |
| Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 0.9 | |
| Human trafficking (not in the total) | 7 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1.4 |
Offenses Cookeville 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 Tennessee'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. 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.