The officers went inside and started taking notes.
“White male; Suicide,” they wrote, and began to describe the scene in detail.
A hearty chuckle interrupted the otherwise somber atmosphere.
One of the officers kneeling down beside the victim looked up at another officer who was pointing at something above him.
The victim had shot himself in the face and one of his eyeballs was stuck on the wall that the officer stood beside.
“He’s got his eye on you,” he said.
Officer Marco Veloso hesitated before telling the joke but by the end of it, we both found ourselves laughing inappropriately.
After ten hours of riding along in the passenger seat of a Newport News police car, I was able to experience part of what the police encounter on the job, and I began to understand why it was so necessary to see the humor in everything they face.
He started to explain why we were amused with such a story, but he stopped himself, able to find only one response.
“We just do it to survive,” Veloso said.
• • •
