It changes them.
Cops see the grotesque, the inexplicable, the scarcely credible.
On a hot night in August we found the guy in the bushes near National Airport who two weeks earlier, having lost his girlfriend, had put a bullet through his head. The stench was awful, a rancid sick reek. The guy's face was sliding off his skull and his spine was a white rod visible through his chest. Some of the cops were breathing through their mouths to avoid gagging. They hide in black humor.