The number of speeding tickets issued by the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office in the first three months of 2019 has dropped by nearly 40%, compared to that time last year.
In an open records request, the I-TEAM obtained speeding ticket numbers for the first quarters of the last four years.
Under Sheriff Earnell Lucas, who took office in January, there were 2,680 speeding tickets written in the first three months of 2019.
Last year under Interim Sheriff Richard Schmidt 4,292 tickets were issued during that time frame.
Under former Sheriff David Clarke, 3,041 were written in the first quarter of 2017 and 2,921 were written in Q1 of 2016.
While he was the interim sheriff, Schmidt highlighted "dangerous driving behavior" as a top priority issue.
Under the new sheriff, Deputy Inspector Daniel Hughes says they are taking a different approach.
"The enforcement strategy was different then," Hughes said. "Our enforcement strategy is becoming a bit more broad, not so much just focusing on speed but there's all kinds of other violations out there that we do really, truly need to enforce."
Hughes added that while traffic tickets are down, arrests are up nearly 40%.