The St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office is intensifying traffic enforcement this summer, deploying additional deputies and launching a new targeting initiative aimed at reducing speeding and reckless driving across the county. Sheriff Richard Del Toro said traffic is the top concern among residents and described the crackdown as a quality of life issue. "I have a family that drives on these roadways. I care about my loved ones. I care about everyone else's loved ones. I want to make this a safer community," Del Toro said. Local residents including Ashley and Jessica say the problem is severe, with Ashley calling it "insane" and noting that nobody slows down. Jessica described drivers as careless and said they cut people off.
Del Toro is using extra deputies from the sheriff's school resource division to boost enforcement while the school year is on break and is placing top-performing deputies in areas of concern. Deputies Christopher Rodrigues and Cheyenne Benning are among those targeting high-problem corridors, including Midway Road, U.S. Highway 1 and Indian River Drive. "We see a lot of excessive speeding in St. Lucie County," Benning said, adding that she most recently had someone pass her on I-95 doing 105 mph. Rodrigues described encountering a driver doing 72 mph on Midway Road and another doing 98 mph on U.S. Highway 1. On Indian River Drive, where the speed limit is 25 mph, Rodrigues said his top speed recorded there was 73 mph.
In the past four weeks, deputies conducted 1,162 traffic stops, wrote 470 citations and issued 1,728 written warnings. The enforcement push is part of a broader strategy Del Toro put in place when he took office. He eliminated the agency's dedicated traffic unit and made traffic enforcement the responsibility of every deputy. Since 2025, the sheriff's office has issued more than 26,000 citations, representing a 155% increase.
The summer crackdown leverages available resources during the school break to address what residents have identified as a pressing safety concern on county roads. By redeploying school resource officers to traffic duties and assigning high-performing deputies to problem areas, the sheriff's office aims to curb dangerous driving behaviors that have become commonplace on local roadways. The dramatic increase in citations under Del Toro's leadership reflects his commitment to making traffic enforcement a priority across the agency rather than limiting it to a specialized unit.