Five instructive looks at law enforcement officer-civilian confrontation. Three recounts of trailer-boating trips from Aiken, South Carolina, to Georgia’s Blackbeard Island. The primary role of ACEs

The Discovery of Blackbeard Island recalls the murders of Aiken-Augusta police officers Scotty Richardson, J. D. Paugh, Cecil Ridley, and Sandy Rogers. The author also writes of the deaths of Amadou Diallo, George Floyd, and others, with a close look at Floyd’s postmortems and his difficult toxicology. These mortal events are considered as the author trailers his boat, the diesel-driven gorgeous Tenacious, to Blackbeard Island on the Georgia coast, a remarkable island where, in his words, “by boating on its creek, you can land on a bank and walk over a dune and find yourself alone on an Atlantic beach where nobody else is sitting or lying about, sunning themselves, listening to beach music, reading, drinking, building sand castles, or playing cornhole or roller bat.” The author reviews the most corrosive, virulent, and abusive elements in a person’s growth history. These elements of abuse are called ACEs, or adverse childhood events. The Discovery of Blackbeard Island recalls the murders of Aiken-Augusta police officers Scotty Richardson, J. D. Paugh, Cecil Ridley, and Sandy Rogers. The author also writes of the deaths of Amadou Diallo, George Floyd, and others, with a close look at Floyd’s postmortems and his difficult toxicology. These mortal events are considered as the author trailers his boat, the diesel-driven gorgeous Tenacious, to Blackbeard Island on the Georgia coast, a remarkable island where, in his words, “by boating on its creek, you can land on a bank and walk over a dune and find yourself alone on an Atlantic beach where nobody else is sitting or lying about, sunning themselves, listening to beach music, reading, drinking, building sand castles, or playing cornhole or roller bat.” The author reviews the most corrosive, virulent, and abusive elements in a person’s growth history. These elements of abuse are called ACEs, or adverse childhood events.