Most people moving to the Memphis suburbs ask the safety question before they ask about schools, commute, or price. If you're running the numbers on Collierville, the answer is unusually clear: this is one of the safest cities of its size in Tennessee, and the data holds up under scrutiny. A city of 51,909 residents that consistently lands near the top of statewide safety rankings is not an accident — it reflects deliberate policing philosophy, an affluent and engaged tax base, and a community culture that takes the question seriously.
The core figures: Collierville posts a violent crime rate of 1.5 per 1,000 residents and a property crime rate of 12.5 per 1,000 residents. Put those beside the Tennessee state averages — violent crime at 6 per 1,000 and property crime at 20.8 per 1,000 — and the gap is significant. The town's violent crime rate runs well below most cities in the state, and the five-year trend tracked by City-Data shows both categories moving in a favorable direction.
Context matters here, particularly because Collierville is positioned about 30 minutes from Memphis, a city that carries a much heavier crime burden than its eastern suburbs. That proximity shapes how people perceive Collierville before they know its own numbers. The reality is that the two cities occupy very different ends of the Tennessee crime spectrum, and Germantown — Collierville's immediate neighbor to the west — is the only other suburb that comes close to matching it on safety. For families weighing the Memphis metro, Collierville and Germantown function as a safety tier of their own.
This guide breaks down the violent and property crime figures in detail, compares them against state and national benchmarks, looks at what the Collierville Police Department actually does to maintain those numbers, and gives you the neighborhood-level picture that matters most when you're deciding where to settle.
How Collierville's Crime Rates Compare
The comparison table below puts the numbers side by side, but the shape of the story is worth stating plainly first: Collierville posts a violent crime rate of 1.5 per 1,000 residents and a property crime rate of 12.5 per 1,000 residents — both meaningfully below Tennessee state averages and below where most American cities of similar size land nationally.
Tennessee's state average for violent crime sits at 6 per 1,000 and property crime at 20.8 per 1,000. Against those benchmarks, Collierville's violent crime rate is less than a quarter of the state figure. Its property crime rate is lower than both the state and national averages, which is the pattern you expect in a low-crime suburb rather than a high-crime urban core.
| Geography | Violent Crime (per 1,000) | Property Crime (per 1,000) |
|---|---|---|
| Collierville | 1.5 | 12.5 |
| Tennessee State Average | 6.0 | 20.8 |
| National Average | ~3.7 | ~18.4 |
Zero Murders in 2024
Collierville recorded zero murders in 2024. For a city approaching 52,000 residents, that is a meaningful data point — not a lucky year, but a reflection of sustained low violent crime over a multi-year period. The five-year trend tracked by City-Data shows both violent and property crime declining across that window.
The Memphis Proximity Question
People who haven't looked at the data sometimes assume proximity to Memphis means shared crime patterns. It doesn't. Collierville and Germantown function as a distinct safety tier within Shelby County, posting rates far below the Memphis metro average. If the Memphis question is holding you back from considering Collierville seriously, the numbers answer it directly. For more on how neighborhoods within Collierville differ, see the best neighborhoods guide.
Violent Crime: What the Numbers Actually Mean
| Measure | Collierville | Tennessee | National | vs. national |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime (per 1,000) | 1.5 | 6 | 3.7 | 59% lower |
| Property crime (per 1,000) | 12.5 | 20.8 | 18.4 | 32% lower |
State and national figures — Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crime Known to Law Enforcement, 2024 (tables 2 and 3). City figures — NeighborhoodScout. City rates come from a different reporting series than the state and national benchmarks, so read the comparison as a direction, not a precise multiple.
Collierville posts a violent crime rate of 1.5 per 1,000 residents. At a population of 51,909, that translates to a relatively small absolute count — and with zero recorded murders in 2024, the violent crime that does occur skews toward lower-severity categories like aggravated assault rather than the incidents that drive fear.
The state comparison sharpens the picture. Tennessee's violent crime rate of 6 per 1,000 — four times Collierville's rate — reflects a state that includes cities with significantly heavier violent crime burdens. Collierville is not dragging that average down slightly; it is a genuine outlier at the low end of the distribution.
What Residents Report
Residents consistently describe the city as quiet, and the crime data backs that up. The qualitative picture is consistent: quiet neighborhoods, visible policing, and a community that treats safety as a shared expectation rather than a passive hope. Residents describe the city as clean and organized, with a culture that values safety and education as paired priorities.
That culture has a practical dimension. When residents engage with the town — attending board meetings, joining neighborhood associations, participating in school events — they reinforce the social cohesion that research consistently links to lower crime rates. Collierville's high median household income of $134,319 also correlates with the kind of stable, owner-occupied housing stock that tends to produce lower crime environments. These are not guarantees, but they are structural advantages.
The Five-Year Trend
City-Data's five-year tracking of Collierville shows both violent and property crime moving in a favorable direction. A city that was already low-crime has been moving lower, not holding steady — which is the pattern that makes a low rate more meaningful than a single year's snapshot.
Property Crime: The More Realistic Concern
If you live in Collierville, property crime is the risk worth thinking about — not because the rate is alarming, but because it is the category where incidents actually occur. Collierville posts a property crime rate of 12.5 per 1,000 residents, which is the honest answer to the question "what might happen here?" — and it sits well below both the Tennessee state figure of 20.8 per 1,000 and the national average.
Property crime in a suburb like Collierville tends to concentrate around commercial corridors and transitional areas rather than deep residential neighborhoods. Schilling Farms, which anchors a significant portion of the city's retail and mixed-use activity, generates more foot traffic and more opportunity for the vehicle break-ins and retail theft that dominate property crime tallies. That is not a knock on Schilling Farms as a place to live — it is a geographic reality that applies to any active commercial zone.
What This Means for Neighborhood Research
When you're narrowing down a neighborhood, property crime patterns are worth a closer look than the city-wide aggregate. The established residential areas — Halle Plantation, Almadale Farms, Hidden Creek, The Stables, Wellington Farms — sit deeper inside the city's residential fabric and generate the kind of low-incident environment that the overall Collierville average reflects. Spring Creek Ranch and Steeplechase share a similar character: large lots, owner-occupied homes, and the quiet that comes with distance from major commercial activity.
The practical advice: check the Collierville Police Department's publicly available incident data for the specific streets you're considering, and look at how a neighborhood sits relative to the commercial corridors. That spatial context tells you more than a city-wide rate can. See the full neighborhood breakdown on the best neighborhoods page.
A Human Friction Moment: What Newcomers Don't Expect
Residents who move to Collierville from higher-crime metro areas sometimes find the adjustment unsettling in an unexpected direction — not fear, but unfamiliarity with a pace where nothing much happens. After six months, the most common observation from transplants is that they stopped locking their cars out of pure habit before catching themselves. That is not a safety recommendation; it is an illustration of how different the ambient environment feels from what many newcomers are used to. The property crime rate is real and worth acknowledging, but it lands in a very different experiential register than what the Memphis metro's headline crime numbers suggest.
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Beyond the Monthly Mortgage Payment — What to Factor In
- The property tax rate above — The 0.65% used in the estimate is the median effective rate — tax actually paid as a share of market value — published by Ownwell, 2026. Half of local homes pay more and half pay less: your own bill depends on that property's assessed value and any exemptions it qualifies for, which can differ a lot from its market price. Confirm with the Shelby County assessor before you budget.
- Total cost of ownership — Your monthly mortgage payment is just the baseline. Depending on the specific city, county, and service district, homeownership costs also include local utility fees, municipal surcharges, and special assessments (such as water, sewer, storm drainage, or local energy taxes) that vary by location.
- Independent due diligence — Because these recurring local costs and municipal fees change depending on the exact property address, buyers must research them independently during their transaction process.
Tax laws, local municipal fees, and utility costs change frequently and individual situations vary. This page is general information, not tax or legal advice — always consult a qualified tax professional, CPA, or local municipal offices for personalized guidance.
The Collierville Police Department: Structure and Accreditation
A low crime rate and a well-run police department are not always the same thing. In Collierville's case, they appear to be genuinely linked. The Collierville Police Department holds dual accreditation: it is accredited through the Tennessee Law Enforcement Accreditation Program (TLEA) and also nationally accredited through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). CALEA accreditation in particular is held by fewer than 5% of law enforcement agencies in the United States — it signals demonstrated compliance with several hundred professional standards covering everything from use-of-force policy to evidence handling to community engagement.
The department's stated philosophy centers on a whole-community approach: prevention, intervention, and interdiction working together, with community relationship-building treated as a core function rather than a supplement to enforcement. That language from the department's own leadership mirrors what criminologists describe as the model most predictive of sustained low crime — policing that people cooperate with produces better information and fewer incidents.
School Resource Officers and Crossing Guards
The Community Services Division places ten specially trained School Resource Officers across Collierville's elementary, middle, and high schools. Collierville was the first agency in Tennessee to extend the SRO program to the elementary level — a distinction that reflects both the department's community orientation and the city's specific priority of school safety. The schools page covers the district's academic profile in detail, but the safety infrastructure around those schools is worth noting here: it is more developed than most cities of comparable size.
The department supplements sworn officers with a Reserve Program of volunteer officers who complete a full basic training curriculum and assist on calls for service. A 14-person civilian School Crossing Guard Unit handles school crossing zones across the town — a staffing level that reflects the city's investment in the kind of visible, community-facing safety presence that residents notice and value.
What Accreditation Actually Signals
For someone relocating from a city where police accountability has been a persistent issue, dual accreditation is a meaningful data point. It does not guarantee perfect outcomes, but it does mean the department is subject to external review and has committed to documented standards. That is a different accountability structure than an unaccredited department of similar size, and it is worth factoring into your assessment of the city's long-term safety picture.
Collierville in the Broader Memphis Safety Context
Choosing a suburb is partly a choice about which city you want to be near — and in the Memphis metro, that choice has unusually large safety implications. Memphis carries one of the higher violent crime rates of any major American city. Collierville's rate is a fraction of the metro average, which is why the two cities appear together in regional rankings only in the sense of contrast.
Germantown, immediately to Collierville's west, is the closest peer on safety. Both cities consistently appear together at the top of safest-suburbs-near-Memphis discussions, and both post crime rates far below the metro average. If you're deciding between the two, safety is not the differentiating factor — the distinction is more about neighborhood character and what kind of town center you want to live near. Collierville's town square gives it a civic core that Germantown doesn't replicate. The cost-of-living picture is roughly comparable between the two.
The Seasonal Reality
One thing newcomers from outside the South don't always anticipate: summer heat in Collierville is genuine and sustained. That's not a crime issue, but it does shape how residents use public space — W.C. Johnson Park and the Wolf River Corridor greenway get heavy use in the cooler months and early mornings in summer, while the middle of the day empties out. This affects the kind of ambient street activity that researchers link to natural surveillance of neighborhoods. In practical terms: the residential streets that feel lively in October can feel notably quieter in August, and that shift is worth understanding if you're evaluating a neighborhood's character across seasons.
The Honest Takeaway on Risk
No city is risk-free, and Collierville is not asking you to pretend otherwise. Property crime happens, and the commercial corridors generate the bulk of it. But the violent crime picture here — a violent crime rate of 1.5 per 1,000 residents, well below both state and national averages, with zero murders recorded in 2024 — is about as reassuring as a city of 51,909 people can honestly claim. For families relocating from higher-crime metros, the adjustment is real and often surprising. For families already in the region, Collierville represents the clearest data-backed answer the Memphis suburbs have to offer on the safety question.
For the full picture on what daily life looks like here — schools, parks and recreation, and the neighborhoods where residents actually put down roots — the rest of this guide covers each in detail.
Local Expert Takeaway: Collierville's safety numbers are not marketing — they hold up against state and national data from multiple independent sources. A violent crime rate of 1.5 per 1,000 residents, zero murders recorded in 2024, and a dually accredited police department with ten School Resource Officers across the district put Collierville in a category of its own within Shelby County. The practical safety research task here is narrower than in most cities: you're not evaluating whether to be in Collierville at all, but which part of it fits your life. The established residential neighborhoods — Halle Plantation, Hidden Creek, The Stables — sit well away from the commercial corridors that account for most property incidents. Walk the streets around W.C. Johnson Park on a weekday morning or through the town center on a weekend afternoon, and you'll understand quickly why residents consistently describe this city as one of the quietest in the Memphis metro.
Quick Takeaways & FAQs
✅ Collierville posts a violent crime rate of 1.5 per 1,000 residents — less than a quarter of the Tennessee state average and well below the national figure.
⚠️ A property crime rate of 12.5 per 1,000 residents is the realistic concern here — below state and national averages, but commercial corridors generate most of those incidents.
📍 The Collierville Police Department holds both TLEA state accreditation and CALEA national accreditation — a distinction held by fewer than 5% of U.S. law enforcement agencies.
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