WOKC Local News – January 23, 2026, 7:40 AM
Transcript
WOKC News. Few ICE encounters with WOKC News. I’m Charles Murphy. A statewide database tracking encounters between law enforcement and illegal aliens showed just 17 encounters in Okeechobee. Since August 1st, the sheriff had three and the police department two, the remainder being state or federal officials. Sheriff Noel Stevens says they have arrested some bad criminal illegals behind bars. He says they also been working closely with ICE from Stewart to protect the farm labor population. He says these are workers we need in Okeechobee. We’ve got a very good rapport and have had with our immigration unit out of Stewart. I feel that there’s a lot of enough bad people that have immigration issues and we’ve been dealing with those bad people and we’ve been very supportive from immigration and working together and not having to just go out and cherry pick that low hanging fruit or the working individuals that are needed and necessary to get the job done. The dashboard showed 51 contacts with the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office, 25 with Indian River, 16 with Glades County Sheriffs, 5 with St. Lucie deputies, 23 with Osceola deputies, 838 with Martin County deputies, and 67 with DeSoto Sheriff deputies. They’ve been working some traffic in Okeechobee since the holidays, 240 hours spent on speed and aggressive drivers, over 200 hours on impaired driving. The sheriff says warnings greatly outnumbered these citations and that speeding remains our biggest problem. The child’s life is more important than where you’re trying to rush to. That’s Sergeant Michael Cauley who’s urging people to slow down going through school zones. They’re making a number of traffic stops there, giving out materials and issuing warnings. He says there’s a lot of distracted drivers in our school zones. Senate President Ben Albritton committed his chamber to be part of the discussions for property tax relief. He says he won’t throw cold water on any kind of relief for taxpayers before at least looking it over. I do love the idea of making sure that our fiscally constrained counties, those 29, have sustainability. Of course. Could the downside be that the state backfills and they’ve got to come up here and argue for their existence every year? I mean, potentially. Albritton says another priority is the affordability crisis in Florida as they work on insurance rates. And he says saving Floridians money by cutting their property taxes would be a good thing. In the courts, an Oogachobee man, Rick Lee Bunting, gets 15 months in state prison for drug trafficking. The 63-year-old had faced 15 years behind bars. Oogachobee and St. Lucie County lawmen say Bunting was part of a drug deal at the Pilot gas station on Oogachobee Road in Fort Pierce on April 23rd of 2024. Maumann had two vehicles under surveillance and then pulled both of the vehicles over after an alleged drug transaction. Bunting admitted to St. Lucie County lawmen that he sold 40 prescription pills for $800. During the traffic stop, deputies say they found another 57 pills that weighed just under 10 grams. Oogachobee lawmen pulled over the second vehicle and found another 40 pills that weighed 6.3 grams. They did not release the name of the St. Lucie County defendant. I’m Charles Murphy, WOKC News.
Recorded from the WOKC daily newscast (Glades Media).