Spencer
City in Van Buren County, 1,511 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Van Buren 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
- Van Buren County
- People
- 1,511
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Spencer 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 Spencer Police Department, Spencer'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 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 639 | ||
| Murder | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 9.2 | |||||
| Rape | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 43 | |||||
| Robbery | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 67 | |||||
| Aggravated assault | 4 | 2 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 520 | ||
| Property crime | 5 | 1 | 5 | 10 | 6 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 2,215 |
| Burglary | 1 | 6 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 306 | ||
| Larceny | 4 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1,574 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 335 | ||||
| Arson | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 13 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023* | 2024 | 2025* | Per 100k | Tennessee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 85 | 43 | 41 | 46 | 52 | 3,567 | 4,122 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1,445 | |
| Vandalism | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 631 | |
| Fraud | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 394 |
| Drug abuse violations | 75 | 31 | 30 | 33 | 39 | 2,850 | 1,173 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 227 |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 71 | |||
| Other Group A offenses | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 69 |
Offenses Spencer 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, 2022, 2024 added together, full years only, beside Tennessee's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
* 2023, 2025: 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.