THP Arrests and Reports

Tennessee Highway Patrol Arrests

The Tennessee Highway Patrol is the statewide patrol arm of the Department of Safety & Homeland Security. Troopers cover every corner of Tennessee through eight districts: Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, Fall Branch, Cookeville, Lawrenceburg, and Jackson. Their duties range from traffic and highway enforcement to impaired-driving operations and checkpoints. Yet no THP-run jail exists. Every arrest goes through a receiving county jail instead.

Many people search hoping for one official roster. That statewide daily dispatch list has never been published. The agency's newsroom shares announcements and enforcement statistics, nothing more. Names, booking photos, and custody status all live with the receiving county.

So pick your path by question. Want a public announcement? Check the newsroom. Want a jail booking? Search the county that took the person in. Want the narrative report? Ask the records custodian for the THP incident or arrest report.

What Tennessee Highway Patrol Publishes

THP spreads its public information across several official sources. Each one does a different job. A release might cover a multi-county enforcement operation, while an activity page groups statistics by county. Never blend them into one "arrest list." Check the report type and period before assuming anything about a single event.

The THP newsroom screen is the agency’s publication page for releases and enforcement news.

The articles cover selected events and initiatives. A person's booking record stays with the county jail that received them.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Activity Reports

THP Activity is a statistics tool, not an arrest-history search. Its categories include DUI, restraint use, commercial vehicles, HOV, and move-over enforcement. County views and archived periods are available too. The counts describe patrol programs well. They never name who was stopped, cited, or arrested.

Enforcement releases tell stories another way. The 2025 Memorial Day enforcement release gave statewide totals and narrative accounts. So did the July 4 traffic announcement. Those figures describe safety outcomes and selected arrest totals, not full booking lists. Compare one release to another only after checking the reporting period and category. The THP Activity interface presents county and enforcement categories in a statistical layout.

Trust the category and year printed on the page. This is aggregate activity data, not a live booking feed. No public statewide daily dispatch log exists. Social posts and releases can be timely, but none is a complete arrest roster.

How to Find a THP Arrest

To trace one arrest, follow the event to the county jail that took the person. The trooper makes the arrest; a sheriff or local corrections department keeps the record. A county roster may list name, intake time, charge, bond, release status, or photo. The details depend on local policy. Rosters lag during booking. They also drop entries after release.

1. Use the THP newsroom or a public release to identify the event, county, district, and date.
2. Confirm which county or local jail received the person. The arresting district and booking county may not be the same label.
3. Open that county through the Tennessee County Directory and check its official roster or recent-booking view.
4. If the roster has no result, widen the date range or contact the jail records custodian to ask whether intake is complete.
5. Request the THP incident or arrest report from the Department’s open-records coordinator when a copy is needed.

Details drift between sources. A press release may skip a name, and a roster may spell it differently or drop a middle initial. Search by incident or case number when you have one. Released? The active-custody page may no longer show the booking. Ask the record's custodian for the historical document instead. For a fresh county intake, the Arrests Last 24 Hours page explains how local windows differ. For the court result, contact the clerk handling the trial-level case.

Where THP Arrestees Are Booked

THP runs patrol districts, not jails. A trooper's arrest gets booked at whatever county or local jail accepts custody. That agency holds the booking entry and sets its own roster display and retention rules. The THP report and the county booking sheet are separate records, kept by separate custodians.

Start with the receiving jail for anyone in county custody. Use the THP request process for an incident report. For a state-felony sentence after transfer, the Tennessee Department of Correction Felony Offender Information Lookup covers it. It is not a county booking search, though.

Request a Tennessee THP Arrest Report

The Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security handles THP arrest report requests through its Open Records page. Its rules took effect March 15, 2019. The legal footing is T.C.A. § 10-7-503(g) and Public Chapter 712. For most documents, the form is SF-1565 Request for Copies. Personnel and disciplinary files need a separate SF-1079 instead.

Tennessee citizens can request copies by mail, email, or in person. Email goes to Safety.OpenRecords@tn.gov. Walk-in or mail options sit at 312 Rosa L. Parks Avenue, 25th Floor, Nashville, and 1150 Foster Avenue, Nashville. A THP district headquarters also accepts requests. Verify the current form and page details before you send anything.

1. Choose the record: arrest report, incident report, citation, booking photo, or dispatch record.
2. Give the county, date and time range, district or trooper if known, incident or citation number, and receiving agency.
3. Complete SF-1565 and attach the required citizenship proof for a copy request.
4. Send it to the Open Records office or appropriate district and ask for a fee estimate before copies or labor are charged.
5. Track the response status. The Department does not post one flat arrest-record fee or a fixed turnaround for every request.

Looking at a record costs nothing in most cases. Copies and permitted labor are charged. The department's policy and TPRA fee rules set those rates. Turnaround varies, since staff must locate, review, redact, and produce each record. Crash-report prices and timelines do not apply to an arrest report. The Open Records page lists the state route and links the forms.

That state page covers Department records only. For a jail's own booking record or photo, contact the county jail.

Tennessee Crash Reports Differ

A crash report and an arrest record answer different questions. One documents a wreck. The other tracks a booking. The Department of Safety points eligible requesters to Purchase TN Crash, a service separate from anything arrest-related. Pricing is set by the report type, not the requester. An online copy costs $10. A district office copy runs $4. Reports usually post about seven days after the crash, while mail requests can take two to three weeks. None of those terms apply to a THP arrest report or booking photo.

Who can order a crash report? The driver, the vehicle's owner, a passenger, or an authorized agent or legal representative. Even when a crash leads to an arrest, the report may not capture the full booking record. Match the document to the question, then ask the records office whether that item exists in its system. Fees and wait times for one record type are never a reliable stand-in for another, since each carries its own cost under the Department's current schedule.

Tennessee Arrest Charges and Outcomes

A THP press release tells one part of the story. The arrest report holds the agency's account. The county booking entry logs the jail intake. The court file carries the later proceedings. There, charges may be reduced, dismissed, or resolved in some other way. Those later steps do not always update an earlier agency publication.

Check with the trial-level court clerk. Compare case numbers before treating a news release as current. Appellate cases fall under Tennessee's Public Case History, which has a narrower scope. For a custody question after booking, call the receiving jail. Do not trust an old release.

Note: The arresting agency, booking jail, and court clerk each hold a different part of the record, so one search rarely answers every question.