St. Lucie County Sheriff Richard Del Toro said traffic is the top concern among residents and described the crackdown as a quality of life issue. Del Toro is using extra deputies from the sheriff's school resource division to boost enforcement while the school year is on break. He is also 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. Benning said the county sees a lot of excessive speeding, noting that someone recently passed her on I-95 doing 105 mph. Rodrigues described stopping a driver doing 72 mph on Midway Road and another doing 98 mph on U.S. 1. On Indian River Drive, where the speed limit is 25 mph, his top recorded speed 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, a 155% increase.