DWI suspects let back on the streets: Several Wake DWI suspects have been released, then rearrested just hours later. Policy calls for someone to pick them up, but officials often don't have time for the extra paperwork.

Byline: Sarah Ovaska

Aug. 19--RALEIGH -- Drunken-driving suspects in Wake County are routinely arrested, processed and turned loose, despite a policy that calls for intoxicated people to be held until a sober person picks them up.

The practice is unusual in the Triangle and other urban areas in the state, which typically require that intoxicated people stay in jail unless they post bail or someone comes for them.

Despite Wake's policy, a magistrate let Mary Kathryn Stone walk out of jail on her own last month. Stone, 29, a Massachusetts resident who has family in Raleigh, had been arrested and charged with drunken driving after a test showed her blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit.

Less than eight hours after Stone walked free from the Wake jail, she was arrested again in Columbus County when a state trooper said he spotted her driving the wrong way down a highway. She appeared to be drinking wine from a soda bottle, and a test showed her blood alcohol level was again three times the legal limit.

"I can't believe they let her out," said Scott Floyd, the trooper who arrested Stone the second time.

People charged with drunken driving rarely spend any time in Wake County's jail. From January to August, only 9 percent of nearly 2,000 people charged with driving while impaired were jailed, according to the Wake County Sheriff's Office. The figures do not include people who were arrested and charged with…