Photos: Drunk on the streets of Anchorage

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A woman, with a blood alcohol content of .262, over 3 times the legal driving limit, is taken into protective custody by Anchorage Safety Patrol personnel outside the midtown Wal-Mart. The Anchorage Safety Patrol takes protective custody of publicly intoxicated persons, transporting them to the safety center at the Anchorage Jail, where they remain for 12 hours in the hopes that they will sober up. Oct 18, 2013

At 10 a.m. on a Friday only a few people lay sprawled out on the black mats of the downtown Anchorage Safety Center, sleeping off the last of their drinks.

Most curl up into tight balls, covering their faces with heavy coats. Some stagger from the mats to the bathroom, flinging open the door and holding on tight to the frame and as they walk in. Some get up and grab sips of water from a nearby fountain before laying back down. Others are gently stirred awake by the emergency medical technicians at the facility, who not only check to make sure they're still breathing, but also to administer breathalyzer tests to see if their bodies have finally metabolized the alcohol that brought them into the facility hours before.

Many of these people are not unknown or uncommon to the workers at the safety center. As they filter in, the intake EMTs them by the first names they already know. Francis. Augusta. Roger. Elena.

These people are part of the "Top 200" -- chronic users of the Anchorage Safety Center, a "title 47" facility that involuntarily holds those so drunk they pose a danger to themselves and the public.

Those top 200 often find themselves designated from the others, with their own breakout statistics on age, gender, and ethnicity.

There's good reason for that. For at least the last decade, the top 200 have consistently represented 50 percent of all safety center intakes. Of those, three-quarters of them spend 28 to 68 nights in the facility. The last quarter -- the "Top 50" -- use the facility even more, having anywhere from 69 to 188 stays in the sleep-off each year.

For the managers of the facility and those working in social services that address that population of chronic inebriates, there's nothing new about the top 200. Mark Lessard, emergency preparedness manager for the Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services, said he's known about the top 200 since he started working for the municipality in 1996.

"They panhandle for money, they're late stage chronic alcoholics, who are very medically fragile and they pretty much are not searching for shelter," Lessard said. "Obviously, they're spending a lot of time with us."

With a population so clearly identified, it seems logical that social service providers could easily target them. But ask any of them and they'll tell you the problem is complex, multi-faceted and without many clear-cut solutions.

READ MORE: Chronic alcoholics keep Anchorage Safety Patrol busy, with no clear solutions