Outskirts Press, INC.

A look at law enforcement officer-civilian confrontation against the backdrop of Blackbeard Island

Blackbeard Island covers the loss of four Aiken-Augusta police officers shot to death in the line of duty from 2011 to 2019: Scotty Richardson, J. D. Paugh, Cecil Ridley, and Sandy Rogers. The author also discusses the deaths of Amadou Diallo and George Floyd, with a close look at Floyd’s postmortems and his toxicology, which includes insight into the scourge of fentanyl. These deaths are juxtaposed against the enchantment and change of Blackbeard Island on the Georgia coast—an island where, “by boating on its creek, you can land on the bank and walk over a dune and be on an Atlantic beach where nobody else is lying about, sunning themselves, listening to music, reading, drinking, or playing cornhole or roller bat.”