When a person is victimized, witnesses a crime, has a suspicious circumstance they witness or has property damaged due to an accident or act of nature, they need to contact Rhea County Central Dispatch at 775-7828 or 775-2442. If the situation is an emergency, the caller should simply dial 911. An officer will respond to the scene and take a report for the victim/witness.
The victim should be given a small business type card with the case number assigned to the incident and description of how the report was labeled. The report is then turned into a supervisor who checks the report for errors and then submits the report to the Rhea County Sheriff’s Department Administrative Office.
The Administrative Office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and closed on all major holidays.
The victim should bring the card to the Rhea County Sheriff’s Department during administrative hours and present the card to the secretary at the front desk to obtain a report. The card provides basic information to the secretary and enables her to locate the report promptly for the victim. All basic reports should be available the following day after report of the incident.
However, complicated accident reports, reports regarding serious crimes, or crimes with a great deal of information to investigate for basic facts may not be available immediately or taken on weekends. All reports more than a year old are archived and may take slightly more time to process for the victim. Occasionally, an interested citizen has a desire to obtain information regarding cases from several years or decades prior to the request, all reports more than seven years old should be housed with the historical archives at the courthouse and require substantially longer time and effort to obtain.
Please contact the Rhea County Sheriff’s Department at 775-7837 or 775-7832 if you have questions regarding a report that you have filed.