Bossier Releases Number Of Arrests During Holiday DWI Checkpoint

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Over the Memorial Day weekend, the Bossier Parish Sheriff's Office held a sobriety checkpoint in an effort to keep area roads safe. The sobriety checkpoint was possible because of a grant awarded to the Bossier Sheriff’s Office from the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission.

The Bossier Sheriff's Office said the goal of the checkpoint was to identify and remove impaired drivers from the road before they cause injury or death to themselves, or others. The Sheriff's Office announced the checkpoint before the weekend, but never mentioned the location of the checkpoint, to increase public awareness of the seriousness of driving while impaired.

According to a release from the Sheriff's Office, BSO deputies and Louisiana State Police troopers conducted the sobriety checkpoint May 29 in the 6000 block of Highway 3 in Benton, with more than 600 vehicles screened. But even with all of those cars being screened, the number of arrests was extremely low.

In fact, the checkpoint resulted in just one DWI arrest.

The Bossier Sheriff's Office says they conducted 23 standardized field sobriety tests while screening 605 vehicles, which all took place on the 29th, between the hours of 8pm and midnight. They also issued one traffic citation for an unrestrained child who was riding in the front seat.

In a release from the Sheriff's Office, Dep. Ryan Rhodes said:

“The arrest number was unusually low, but we are hopeful that means we have been successful in delivering our public message that the Bossier Sheriff’s Office has a zero-tolerance policy regarding impaired driving. Voluntary compliance with the DWI laws of this state has been the main goal of all our impaired driving operations, and I believe voluntary compliance is what we saw Saturday night.”

On the Shreveport side of the Red River, the Shreveport Police Department has announced a DWI/seatbelt checkpoint for the first full weekend of June.