By George Slaughter
Buddy Frazier – photo courtesy Schmidt Funeral Home
Frazier died Wednesday. He was 77.
“He was a great investigator,” Mayor Chuck Brawner said. “He was old school law enforcement. He expected you to do your job and stay busy and you’ll never have a problem with him.”
Brawner recalled how one day he was working with a German Shepherd police dog, who was sitting behind him in a room. Frazier walked up behind them, but apparently the dog didn’t like surprises, barked, and kept Frazier from coming into the room.
“I got a good earful from him over that,” Brawner said. “He was always available, especially for us guys working the night shift. He lived just outside the city limits of Katy. He was a great investigator and a great motivator. He basically had your back in law enforcement.”
Brawner once owned a business off of South Mason, and both of Frazier’s sons, Loyd and John, worked there. Loyd eventually moved to the East Coast. John Frazier joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, where he trained Brian Brawner, the mayor’s son, when Brian left the U.S. Marine Corps.
Today, Brian Brawner is a sergeant and John Frazier is a deputy in Brian’s squad.
“The Brawners and Fraziers go back a long way,” Brawner said.
Katy Police Officer Chris Mohr joined the force in 1997 when Frazier was chief. He described Frazier as a great guy who was blunt.
“He was a fun guy to work for, but you knew where you stood with him,” Mohr said. “You messed up once, he let you know. If you got in trouble, he let you know. He was open but he was strict. He was good.”
Police Captain Byron Moytek also joined the police in 1994. He remembered Frazier as a great man and, like Mohr, as his first police chief in Katy.
“It was memorable for me because he hired me,” Moytek said. “He was a good chief for us. It’s hard to hear that he passed. He was extremely good to us and the city while he was here.”
Frazier served in the U.S. Army before choosing a law enforcement career. He was an officer in the Dayton Police Department, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department and the Memorial Village Police Department before retiring in 1983.
Brawner recalled how the then-police chief, Pat Adams, urged Brawner to recruit Frazier to come to Katy. He said Katy had very few police officers in those days.
“He (Frazier) was my captain at the Memorial Village Police Department in 1970s,” Brawner said. “I worked under him for a number of years.”
Frazier joined the Katy Police Department and worked his way through the ranks. He served as a patrolman, sergeant, and captain before being named police chief in 1996. He retired from that job in 2009.
“I had so much respect and admiration for him,” Brawner said. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot since his passing.
Frazier is survived by his wife, Roberta “Robbie” Frazier; sons, Loyd E. Frazier and his wife, Donna, John R. Frazier and his wife, Denise; sisters, Melinda Smith and her husband Russell, Connie Doss, and Carla Stewart and her husband, Ferrian; grandchildren, Robert, James, Nicholas, Bryan, Eric, and Ryan.
The family will hold a visitation from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday, at the Schmidt Funeral Home Grand Parkway Chapel, in Katy. The funeral will be held there at 10:30 a.m. on Monday. Interment will be private.