During the People Purges of 1974 and 1975, the many people who peopled Scarfolk were alarmed to learn that they were now the kinds of people that the government categorised as "people". With no clear definition of what the state meant by "people", the mayor, who had previously declared himself a man of the people, tried to alleviate anxiety among his people by saying he didn't want to drive a wedge between people; he only intended to arrest those kinds of people who he deemed not to be "people people". He said that he of all people knew that the most effective way to crack down on these people was with "people power": People working together to observe people, being able to tell people apart and then reporting those people to the appropriate people in authority. On the 13 August 1975, the only people not in prison were six government officials, members of Scarfolk police force and a man called Dennis Peoples who suffered from a rare psychiatric syndrome called Clinical Lycanthropy which led him to believe he was a puffer fish.