Bad Tacoma Top Cop, David Brame

Most people don't know about David Brame unless they live in Western Washington, but he makes the top of my list of bad cops. Mind you, I am from Los Angeles, I lived through the L.A. riots, believe the hype, L.A. cops are no joke; at least that was the case back in the day.

Perhaps living under a microscope for a while has changed their evil ways, but somehow I doubt it. Mark Furman is a prime example of how embarrassing LAPD is with their rogue, racist cops. So, you have to understand that I never expected to run into corrupt cops when I moved to the small berg of Tacoma Washington.

On December 28, 2001 Ray Corpuz, Tacoma City Manager, appoints Davie Brame as Tacoma's 46th police chief. On January 15 Brame appointed Catherine Woodward as assistant chief in Tacoma. The rest is history.

The news came on April 26th, 2003, of the murder/suicide by David Brame. He shot his wife and then himself in a small shopping center in the town of Gig Harbor. Brame had met his wife in the parking lot to drop of the children from an obvious visitation. He told the children to stay in the car and he went to have a conversation with his wife.

Witnesses said they heard shouting and then the shots. He had shot Crystal Brame in the head and then himself in the head. A bystander had to grab the little girl before she got to her mother. Both children were kept from their parents until the police arrived. Brame died a few hours later. Crystal was flown to Harbor View Trauma Center and while she hung on for a while, but ultimately she died.

What ensued was an absolute soap opera of epic proportions. The assistant chief of police was Catherine Woodard. There were rumors that she was personally "seeing" Chief Brame. Living in Tacoma, I watched Seattle/Tacoma area news and that night on the six o'clock news Assistant Chief Woodard was point blank asked, "Were you intimate with Chief Brame?" She answered "No". Later it was determined that this was a complete lie.