Tennessee Code Annotated

Tenn. Code Ann. § 38-8-301 (2026)

Part definitions

✓ current as of May 2026

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As used in this part, unless the context otherwise requires:

(1) "Committee" means a police advisory and review committee;

(2) "Head of a law enforcement agency" means a chief of police of a municipal police force or a county sheriff, as applicable;

(3) "Internal affairs unit" means a division of a local law enforcement agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by law enforcement officers employed by the agency;

(4) "Law enforcement officer" means any person employed by any law enforcement agency of a local government entity, excluding a head of a law enforcement agency, who has a duty imposed by law to:
- (A) Maintain public order;
- (B) Make arrests for offenses, whether that duty extends to all offenses or is limited to specific offenses; and
- (C) Investigate the commission or suspected commission of offenses;

(5) "Local governing body" means the city council, city commission, county commission, metropolitan council, or board of mayor and aldermen of a city;

(6) "Local government entity" means any city, town, municipality, county, including any county having a metropolitan form of government in this state;

(7) "Local law enforcement agency" means:
- (A) Within the territory of a municipality, the municipal police force;
- (B) Within the territory of a county having a metropolitan form of government, the metropolitan police force; or
- (C) Within the unincorporated territory of a county, the sheriff's office; and

(8) "Mayor" means the officer vested by either the city or county charter or general law with the executive powers of a local government entity.

Amended by 2023 Tenn. Acts, ch. 454, s 1, eff. 7/1/2023.

Acts 1989, ch. 398, § 1.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 3 cases, 1995–2019 · leading case: Ezell v. Cockrell, 902 S.W.2d 394 (Tenn. 1995).

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Ezell v. Cockrell, 902 S.W.2d 394 (Tenn. 1995). · cites it 2× “See Tenn.Code Ann. § 38-8-301 to § 38-8-309 (1991); Tenn.”

Janet C. Fleming v. City of Memphis (2019). “See Tenn. Code Ann. § 38-8-301 to § 38-8-309 (1991); Tenn.”

Robert T. Logan, Jr. v. Civil Serv. Comm'n of the City of Memphis (Tenn. Ct. App. 2008). “4 4 W e note that Sergeant Logan contends that the provisions of Tennessee Code Annotated sections 38-8-301 through -310 govern the disciplinary process in question and that those standards were violated in his case.”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.