On the Sad Case of Tacoma Police Chief Brame
See also www.antipeonage.0catch.com
Here is my take on the sad story of the Brames.
I have long wondered why the guys who lash out violently at their wives or girlfriends do not lash out at the state officers and judges who turn a blind eye to the Constitution. The answer turns out to be simple. They usually have bought into the "traditional" concept that the father is responsible for the financial support of the family. They believe in meeting their "responsibilities" and actually have little sympathy for us. I'll bet David Brame as a police officer had long been enthusiastic about arresting noncustodial parents who were unable to comply with their support orders, regardless of whether the orders were reasonable or whether the noncompliance was due to lay-offs.
But as Officer Brame no doubt found out early in his marriage, some control has to be imposed on the responsibilities or the responsibilities will get out of hand. Fortunately most women do not need to be told and their husbands are usually too lazy or too kind hearted to be any kind of control freak.
However, there is something about law and government that attracts control freaks. Police work definitely attracts control freaks and power trippers. Even for a chief of police, the paycheck is a finite resource. Officer Brame's approach to keeping his responsibilities from getting out of hand was to tightly control every activity his wife engaged in. This included, if I believe the media reports, monitoring the odometer of his wife's car every time she drove it on an errand.
Naturally, nobody likes to be tightly controlled. Crystal Brame no doubt chaffed at the restrictions he imposed upon her so that he can proudly say that he met his responsibilities. When push came to shove, he was bigger and can push and shove her much harder than she can he.
Of course, what a police officer can get away with in terms of how he treats a suspect he arrests is not necessarily what he can get away with in how he treats his wife.
Thus she started the divorce process.
Rather than blame the problems on the unfairness of the divorce system he helped enforce, he blamed his wife for not upholding her end of the marriage deal.
As for those of us who complain about the violations of the Antipeonage Act and the state constitutions that prohibit imprisonment for debt, we may have these same complaints about our wives not upholding their end of the marriage deal. But we recognize that they are not at fault for this insane system. When you take a principled stand based on the law, you tend to recognize that killing people is the absolute last resort and then you had better be prepared for all of the consequences of war.
So naturally we do not murder our ex-wives and we use all non-violent means at our disposal. Unfortunately, because we are nonviolent, the press and the talk radio puts the cone of silence around our most legitimate concerns.
That is why those who react with violence never seem to complain about the divorce laws offending the Constitution. Frankly, that is not what motivates them.
Those of us who do complain about the violations of the Constitution and the Antipeonage Act understand that committing murder is also in violation of the law and not what we want to do anyway. Therefore we don't engage in violence.
David Brame is not a victim. He bought into this system when he became a police officer and reacted violently when it looked like he would face the consequences he was only too happy to enforce upon others.
However, since I wrote this above treatise, I became aware of another side of the David Brame story. His sister, Jane Brazell nee Brame, wrote her version of events and it is published on the Equal Justice Foundation's website. I will reprint it here if I obtain her permission. You can find it by following the link here and scrolling down past some of the other stories of violent women abusing their men or other women.
Perhaps I took the press reports a little to literally.
That is right, they are biased.
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