Captain Bradford A. Pelton
District Commander

The West Palm Beach District covers Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Okeechobee and Indian River Counties for a total of 117 miles along Florida's Turnpike. We occupy an office in Palm Beach County at the 99 mile marker and an office in St. Lucie County at the 145 mile marker.

The Florida Highway Patrol's only K-9 instruction school is located in our district. The K-9 program was organized in 1994 and instructed by Trooper Michael VanLeer. Trooper VanLeer is currently the only K-9 evaluator in the state working for our Department. The K-9 training includes 460 hours ofobedience, agility, evidence recovery, tracking, area and building searches, criminal apprehension, and 320 hours in narcotics detection.

The new dispatch center for the entire Florida Turnpike is located in Palm Beach County. The building was built to withstand hurricane force winds of up to 200 miles an hour. The dispatch center contains state of the art 800 megahertz communication equipment and is scheduled to become operational in June 1998.