Arizona police pulled over more than 27,500 vehicles during the 2008 holiday season and 2,300 of those stops (8 percent) resulted in DUI arrests.

State and local police had a number of checkpoints set up and increased enforcement in busy commercial strips in the Phoenix area, including Old Town Scottsdale, downtown Tempe and the Bell Road strip of Glendale and Peoria.

TNT commentator and former Phoenix Suns player Charles Barkley was among those DUI arrests.

Close to 2,600 police officers were part of the DUI crackdown and checkpoint effort, which ran from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.

The number of arrests (2,308) was down from 2,900 DUI arrests during the 2007 holiday season, when police pulled over 37,200 cars.

Most of the DUI arrests this year were for misdemeanor charges, according to state officials.