County crime profile · 2024 · mid-size county · property-led
Polk County, TN
Polk County (17,544 people) sits in the mid-size county band in Tennessee. This page opens with reported offense counts, then rates where a Census join exists.
Polk County, TN reported 268 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Polk County, TN agencies reported 47 violent and 164 property offenses. That equals about 268 violent and 935 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
2024 UCR year
47 violent offenses
268/100K violent rate
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for Polk County, TN
Position in the state cohort
Polk County reported a higher violent-crime rate than most comparable Tennessee counties
At 267.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Polk County ranks 10 of 92 — above 82 of the 91 other Tennessee counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +91.4% against the cohort median of 139.9. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
The reported mix leans further toward property offenses than the state cohort
Violent offenses are 22.3% of the 211 Part I offenses reported in Polk County for 2024, against a median of 29.0% across comparable Tennessee counties — a gap of 6.7 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
2020–2024 direction
The reported violent-crime rate ended the window higher
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 256.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 267.9 in 2024 (+4.4%). The highest observed value was 267.9 in 2024 and the lowest 188.1 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Mid-size county rows still aggregate voluntary UCR submissions. Per-100,000 rates need a matched 2020 Census population; unmatched stay count-only. County-wide totals rarely describe any single town inside the line.
Crime Breakdown (2024) · property-led · mid-size county
Category
Count
Property Crime
164
Burglary
46
Larceny-Theft
96
Motor Vehicle Theft
22
Arson
3
Violent Crime
47
Murder
1
Rape
5
Robbery
2
Aggravated Assault
39
Reporting Agency
Polk County Sheriff's Office NIBRS-participating
Polk County's crime figures on this page originate from Polk County Sheriff's Office's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Similar-Size Counties in Tennessee
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the Tennessee counties closest to Polk County in population. Their populations run from 17,341 to 18,489, against 17,544 here. Or launch the
side-by-side compare tool
to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crime in the United States (CIUS) Table 10.
FBI Table 10 supplies county offense counts but no resident population. Where this page shows a per-100,000 rate, the denominator is a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census Bureau county population; unmatched county rows remain count-only. Statewide comparisons draw on the state UCR program. Verify with FBI.gov UCR and Census.gov QuickFacts.