photo by: Associated Press

In this file photo from Dec. 29, 2011, a car approaches a sobriety checkpoint set up along a busy street in Albuquerque, N.M.

Lawrence police stopped nearly 350 vehicles during a sobriety checkpoint Saturday night and arrested four drivers for DUI, according to numbers provided by the department.

Police at the checkpoint also made two arrests for drug possession, Officer Drew Fennelly said.

The checkpoint took place from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. in the 2300 block of East 23rd Street, Fennelly said.

Officers stopped westbound traffic coming into town, Fennelly said.

Other than the six DUI and drug arrests, officers didn’t make other arrests at the checkpoint, Fennelly said. He said a total of 346 vehicles were stopped.

Besides arresting impaired drivers, a stated goal of the effort is to deter people from driving drunk in the first place. Police announced in advance last week that they planned a checkpoint at an undisclosed location on Saturday, the day of the University of Kansas homecoming football game.

While Lawrence police have conducted a number of DUI “saturation patrols,” in which extra officers are put on patrol to look for impaired drivers, it’s been a while since they’ve conducted a checkpoint.

The last checkpoint was in spring 2017, Fennelly said.

He said both efforts are grant-funded with an overall goal of decreasing impaired driving.

“The saturation patrols can be done with fewer officers and are effective in making arrests for driving under the influence, but likely have a diminished deterrent effect due to the low occurrence of contact,” Fennelly said, via email. “Conversely, the check lane is a much more visible enforcement tactic, and the knowledge that a check lane is occurring at an undisclosed location likely has more of a deterrent effect.”