Tectonic coal has become an important research topic for preventing coal mine disasters and for exploring and developing coal-bed methane resources. To investigate the mechanical and acoustic properties of tectonic coal, we conducted a uniaxial compression test for tectonic and non-tectonic coal, and acoustic emission (AE) signals have been simultaneous captured in the compression process. The AE energy and waiting time of events have been studied statistically. The results show that the probability density function of AE energy follows the power law distribution well, and indicates that the AE of non-tectonic coal is mainly generated from the fracture source, while the probability density function distribution of tectonic coal is the mixing result of fracture and friction effects. Only the waiting time distribution of non-tectonic coal follows the typical brittle fracture’s double power law behavior. The waiting time distribution of tectonic coal shows the single power law with a smaller exponent value, which is associated with the granular microstructure of tectonic coal. The distribution of aftershock and Båth’s law are not sensitive to microstructure, and are identical for non-tectonic and tectonic coal. At last, the correlation dimension results for the spatial distribution of AE hypocenters indicated that the rough continuous decrease in multifractal dimension might be a precursor to devastating destruction.