Rion Scott - Insurrections

7. The subject admitted to grabbing the young woman’s backside but claimed it was an unfortunate accident. Never having much coordination, he told school officials at the time of the incident, he lost balance during a game of basketball and fell. His arms went flailing about and landed on the young woman’s “butt cheeks.” Later he changed his story, claiming that his fall was the result of “horsing around” with other males in the class. In other words, he was pushed. His alternative explanation was that there was a second groper, who took advantage of his fall to stealthily fondle the woman and place the blame on him. These interpretations of the day in question are much disputed by the young woman and eyewitnesses. Several close acquaintances have said that Louis, before he stopped speaking, claimed that he accosted the young woman out of boredom. After a lengthy investigation, a second malefactor was never discovered, and school officials determined that no one else was involved in his fall. Having examined the record and interviewed hundreds of people, both intimately and tangentially connected to young Louis Smith, the authors of this study have concluded that the boredom motive is the most persuasive.

8. The speaker, who served as a gym teacher while the subject attended District Central Senior High School, is the only DCSHS official who admitted to knowing Louis well, and even he said that their interactions became rare once Louis began to withdraw.

“He seemed like he wanted to be left alone,” the gym teacher recalled. “So I left him alone.”

9. After some debate, the authors have decided to leave Frank’s vulgarities uncensored. We believe that, while potentially offensive, they serve to evoke the world that was slipping from young Smith’s comprehension.

10. Carson has a different memory of the occasion and insists, rather angrily, that it was actually Frank who made the “fondle any girls’ butts lately” quip. The authors are not interested in determining who said what on that day. Based on interviews we have conducted, we are satisfied that it occurred in some form and feel that it is a good example of the isolation that Louis Smith felt at District Central after his return. We use Frank’s description of this particular incident because it is the most evocative, not because we feel it is more true than Carson’s or, for that matter, anyone else’s description.

11. This description is not ours. Like everything else in this study, it is derived from interviews and a careful perusal of available public records.

12. One of the key differences between animals and humans is that animals seem to lack declarative memory, the memory of facts. There are two types of declarative memory: semantic and episodic. Semantic memory comprises facts that exist independent of time and place — when a person recalls that the Earth is round, she is using this type of memory — while episodic memory comprises facts dependent on time and place; when a person recalls the moment he learned that the Earth is round, he is using this type of memory.

Declarative memory is distinct from procedural memory, the memory required to do things that feel relatively automatic, such as walking, sitting, or riding a bicycle. This is the way an animal learns to stay away from a hot stove after a burn, even if that animal lacks the language to describe pain or the understanding of time and space that would allow it to create a narrative out of being burnt.

These separate types of memory reside in different parts of the brain. BEPs appear to completely lose their declarative memory, and their procedural memory also appears to devolve. How or why this happens is not fully understood.

Animals call on procedural memory when performing simple tricks. In fact, we managed to teach Louis, while he was in captivity, to knock twice on the floor to signal his pleasure with a meal and three times to signal his displeasure. Attempts to teach Louis simple sign language, however, failed, as did attempts to have him relearn basic words such as da-da .

13. This is no doubt an example of Louis’s procedural memory warning him of danger, as his instincts remembered the pain of being shunned by high school peers.

14. Regrettably, the woman in question declined to be interviewed for this report. We had hoped to discuss the incident with her and achieve a fuller understanding of what actually transpired, but we are able to infer certain things from the police report and interviews with homeless people who witnessed the incident from the moment Louis woke until his arrest. Louis at the time was not completely lost in his bestial personality, as he still wore clothes. According to the description provided by the police, he wore a brown sports coat over a navy blue T-shirt. He also wore tattered blue jeans and nothing on his feet. We assume his clubbing days were behind him.

We cannot be certain, but we believe he did not mean to attack the woman. Primitive humans, like their simian counterparts, often showed affection by grooming one another. This consists in part of picking insects out of each other’s hair. It is not inconceivable that upon seeing a pretty woman, Louis rushed to show affection by grooming her. Being a modern woman, she naturally became frightened by such attention.

15. Circling Louis was a risky move and could have ended disastrously. This is where a better understanding of the disorder is imperative, for it will lead to sounder methods of capture that will be safer for BEPs, rescue workers, and the community. It is not an exaggeration to state that the Cross River police, like many police departments across the country, approach most situations with their guns drawn and their fingers poised on the trigger, particularly if the suspect is, like Louis, African American. If police understand that a suspect is suffering from Reverse Animalism, they can use techniques of capture that do not involve killing or maiming. The authors believe police departments across the country should be trained to recognize the disorder and safely subdue suspects who may be suffering from it.

A 2012 study of the CRPD conducted jointly by researchers at Harvard University and Freedman’s University in Cross River (H. A. Colmes and Marjorie Ray, “Trouble in ‘Black Paradise’: Examining Race and Violence in the Cross River Police Department,” CrimCon 26, no. 3 [2012], 42–59) found that officers in Cross River, regardless of race, were more likely to use excessive and deadly force against African American and Latino suspects. It was determined that the CRPD, a largely African American force, was seventeen times more likely to use deadly force against minority suspects than similarly sized police departments. We do not intend to turn this study into an indictment of the CRPD. It is to their credit that Louis was not shot and killed during his capture.

Accepted techniques for subduing a Backwardly Evolved Person are not unlike techniques police already employ to capture wild animals. The use of stun guns, nets, and even tranquilizer darts can be very effective.

16. The stages of the disorder are the subject of ongoing debate. We have outlined them as we understand them:

• Stage I: BEPs withdraw from social activities. A preference for animal company over humans emerges, as well as an exaggerated empathy for animal suffering coupled with coldness toward human suffering. BEPs start showing a lack of control over base desires. Memory starts to fail.

• Stage II: BEPs may begin to mimic the behavior of domesticated animals. Activities such as eating pet food and forgoing the toilet bowl for the litter box are not uncommon. BEPs often develop a pattern of urinating, defecating, and masturbating in public. BEPs become lax in their hygiene, and their vocabulary begins to slip.