OKEECHOBEE — According to data released by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, juvenile arrests in Okeechobee County fell by 28 percent.

Juvenile arrests dropped from 210 in the 2018-19 fiscal year to 151 in the 2019-20 fiscal year.

Some of that drop can be attributed to COVID-19, but the number of arrests had been trending downward ever since 2017. At the state level three years ago, the justice system began emphasizing prevention and early intervention services.

“We started a pilot program here locally using the civil citation program,” said Okeechobee County Sheriff Noel E. Stephen. “We’ve got dollars sent to us by the state and we utilize Children’s Home Society to do our implementation and monitoring of our civil citation. That gives the youth criminal violators who committed mostly misdemeanors out of the system and gives them an alternative to jail. Kind of like a quasi-probation. Keeps young ones from having problems in college or joining the military later in life.”

Another factor that’s helped is the community aspect that a small town like Okeechobee has, he explained. While communities across the country struggle with creating a more healthy relationship between the police and the people they protect, that problem hasn’t manifested in any material way in Okeechobee.

“I got a good crew, and we try to keep that concept of community,” explained Sheriff Stephen. “I try to treat my officers here like family, and they treat the community like a family. Like the old adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Even two parents working full-time struggle to raise a youngun or two. We understand and see that and we try to work together mold them to be good citizens later in life.”