Cookeville Police Department entry pay

What Cookeville says about itself

The mission of the Cookeville Police Department is to provide public safety through professional police service and establish quality relationships with the community which will aid in the prevention of crime and improve quality of life for its citizens.

What Cookeville does

The Cookeville Police Department is the municipal police agency for Cookeville, Tennessee, the seat of Putnam County on the Upper Cumberland plateau between Nashville and Knoxville. It is led by a chief of police and organized into a Uniform Services Bureau and a Support Services Bureau, which between them contain the Patrol, Traffic, Criminal Investigation and Administrative Services divisions. The department frames its work around professional police service and community relationships as the route to preventing crime.

Where the figure comes from

Checked 21 September 2026. The "CLASSIFICATION CHART Effective July 1, 2026" in the City of Cookeville Budget 2026-2027 is a matrix whose grade header row reads "I I-PD J K L M"; the column headed I-PD carries the three range values "$54,644 $61,464 $73,756", and the job title "POLICE OFFICER" is printed in that same I-PD column, so the police officer entry salary is $54,644. — open the source document
This is the lowest of the three published range values for pay grade I-PD, the police-officer grade, on the City of Cookeville's Classification Chart, which states on its face "CLASSIFICATION CHART Effective July 1, 2026" and appears at pages 6 to 8 of the adopted Budget 2026-2027 (the budget's contents page lists it as "Pay Scales/Classification Chart - Classification Chart/Pay Ranges"). An adjacent page of the same budget is stamped "Updated 06/14/2026". The figure therefore takes effect 1 July 2026, the start of the City's fiscal year ending 30 June 2027. Because the chart is a matrix rather than a list of lines, column attribution matters and was verified positionally rather than by reading flattened text: in the PDF's own coordinates the grade headers sit at x = 101 (I), 204 (I-PD), 313 (J), 437 (K), 560 (L) and 684 (M); the money triplet $53,480 / $61,464 / $73,756 sits at x = 66-124 under grade I, while the triplet $54,644 / $61,464 / $73,756 sits at x = 176-224 under grade I-PD; and the title POLICE OFFICER is set at x = 167, inside the I-PD band and well clear of the grade I band. The figure is the ENTRY rate because $54,644 is the lowest of the three range values for that grade, and because the gate above it is promotion to a different title in a higher grade: Master Police Officer and Detective/Master Police Officer are set at x = 252 in the grade J column ($59,636 minimum) and Sergeant at x = 378 in grade K ($66,542 minimum), with Captain higher still. There is no police recruit, cadet or trainee grade anywhere on this chart; the only trainee grade in the City's pay structure belongs to the fire service, on a separate page headed "CLASSIFICATION CHART - FIRE DEPARTMENT Effective July 1, 2026" whose first column is literally "G (TRAINEE)" at $44,579, and that fire trainee figure must not be mistaken for a police entry rate. No annualization was performed by me, because the chart publishes annual salary ranges directly; this is worth stating plainly, since the figure carried into this pass for Cookeville was an hourly one, $26.27. The two reconcile exactly at a 2,080-hour year: $54,644 divided by 2,080 is $26.2712, which rounds to $26.27. In other words the hourly figure and the annual figure are the same wage expressed two ways, the 2,080-hour basis is corroborated by that agreement rather than assumed by me, and the annual figure is published here because the City's own chart states it directly and so no multiplier had to be chosen. Note for completeness that had Cookeville used a 2,236-hour sworn year like neighbouring Columbia, the implied hourly would have been $24.44 rather than $26.27, so the match is meaningful. Two further cautions for a reader. First, grade I-PD is a police-specific variant of grade I that differs from it only at the bottom of the range: both grades share the same $61,464 middle and $73,756 top value, and only the entry differs ($53,480 for I against $54,644 for I-PD), so anyone reading one column off will see a figure that looks almost right. Second, the chart does not print the word "annual" on its face; the annual basis is established by the magnitudes themselves (the same chart runs up to $223,350 for City Manager) and by the chart's role as the salary basis behind the budget's Personnel Services appropriations, not by an explicit label.
Entry-level base salary only. Overtime, bonuses, education incentives, shift differentials, locality pay and lateral rates are excluded, so most officers earn more than this.

How this level compares

Where Cookeville sits is partly about the agency and partly about which level of policing it belongs to. The three levels do not pay the same.

How it ranks

Common questions

How much does a Cookeville Police Department officer make?

Cookeville Police Department starts a new officer on $54,644 a year, about $26.27 an hour on a 2,080-hour year. That is base salary before overtime, bonuses, education incentives, shift differentials and locality pay, so most serving officers earn more. The figure comes from The "CLASSIFICATION CHART Effective July 1, 2026" in the City of Cookeville Budget 2026-2027 is a matrix whose grade header row reads "I I-PD J K L M"; the column headed I-PD carries the three range values "$54,644 $61,464 $73,756", and the job title "POLICE OFFICER" is printed in that same I-PD column, so the police officer entry salary is $54,644..

Is that good pay for a police officer in Tennessee?

It ranks #19 of 26 agencies we have verified in Tennessee — 7 pay less, 18 pay more in the state — and #1,880 of 2,288 nationally. Against the national median it is $12,041 below, and against other municipal agencies $13,496 below.

The agencies either side of it