Claudette Wyms

Claudette Wyms
Father:	Bryce Wyms
Affiliation:	Los Angeles Police Department
Profession:	Police captain Detective
Marital status:	Divorced
Spouse(s):	Jeff Franklin (ex-husband)
Significant other(s):	James Freeman (boyfriend)
Children:	Rebecca Wyms Bonnie Wyms
Status:	Alive (suffering from Lupus)
Played by:	CCH Pounder
Season(s):	1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
First episode:	"Pilot"
Last episode:	"Family Meeting"

Claudette Wyms was a Los Angeles Police Department detective that worked at the Barn in Farmington. During that time, she was promoted to captain of the Barn.

Season 1

Claudette and her partner, Dutch Wagenbach, arrived at the scene of the murder of Nancy Reborg. Officer Danny Sofer came to inform them that Nancy's sister, Janet, was outside and Dutch went out to talk to her. When Janet asked about Nancy's daughter, Jenny, Claudette took a picture of the girl to help find her. As they went back to the Barn, Dutch commented Claudette that he was thinking of asking Danny out on a date. Claudette tried to persuade him not to do it, but he told her he was confident.

Knowing that the first suspect is Nancy's husband, Lonnie, Claudette tells Dutch and Aceveda that witnesses saw an informant of her, Ponyboy Harris, knocking at Nancy's door the day before. Claudette finds Ponyboy unloading a van of stolen VCR's and asks him about Lonnie. He tells her that he knew that Lonnie was at a crack house owned by a man called Monty. Claudette then arrested him for the stolen VCR's. After arriving to the Barn, Claudette asked Vic Mackey about that crack house. Vic told her he knew Monty so he agreed to go pick Lonnie.

When Mackey brings him, Dutch and Claudette start interrogating him. Although Lonnie was still sobering from his crack addiction, they press on him and he confesses to the murder and selling his daughter to a pedophile called George Sawyer. Dutch and Claudette quickly get an arrest warrant and when they arrive at Sawyer's house, they find him feeding his ill mother. As they bring Sawyer back to the Barn and start questioning him, Dutch manages to make him confess that he sold the girl to a doctor he met through the Internet.

After they bring him to the Barn, Dutch and Claudette start questioning him. However, he closes himself and refuses to talk. Captain David Aceveda pulls them out and brings Mackey who tortures Grady into confessing the location of Jenny. This angers Dutch and Claudette, but they quickly leave with Aceveda to find the girl. They find her hidden underneath a secret basement at Grady's house. Claudette then returns home to her dog.

That night, when Detective Terry Crowley was murdered during a raid at a drug dealer's house, Aceveda put Dutch and Claudette on the case. However, in the morning, Assistant Chief Ben Gilroy put Internal Affairs on the case and pulled them out.

Dutch and Claudette later arrived at the scene where a street vendor was shot and injured. They then talked with the vendor's son who told them that his father owed money to a Marlon Demeral. When Danny and Julien brings Marlon, he and Claudette prepare to interrogate him. However, Aceveda takes Dutch to help him with another investigation. After Dutch finishes interrogating Mackey and Shane Vendrell, he tells Claudette about what happened but she doesn't wanna know about it.

Sometime later, Claudette was working with Dutch to find the attacker of Connie Riesler. Claudette comes up with some mugshots and Connie identifies a man called William Greeley. When Dutch presents her his idea about Greeley being the killer of several other prostitutes, Claudette thinks he's stretching. Dutch and Claudette then went to his house and found him naked with his penis inside a jar and a locked fridge full of jars with semen. As they interrogated Greeley, Dutch tried to make him confess the other murders but Claudette tried to keep him focused on Connie's case. However, Dutch assured Claudette that he was responsible for other murders and that he wanted to confess. When Greeley asked another moment alone with Claudette, Dutch refused to but Claudette asked him to leave them. Claudette then flirted with Greeley making him confess the attacks. But when Greeley tried to attack her as well, she kicked him in the groin.

Another day, Claudette and Dutch were trying to help a woman, Ellie Ruiz, find her missing husband. Dutch and Claudette started asking immigrants around home improvement centers, where Ellie's husband was last seen. Someone confessed them that they had seen Manuel and his best friend, Eduardo Salcido, leave with a man called Jamison. When Dutch and Claudette asked Jamison about Manuel, he told them he didn't remember him. They eventually found Eduardo and, although he escaped the first time, they finally captured him. During questioning, they thought that Manuel and Eduardo had a fight which had caused Eduardo to kill him. However, Eduardo confessed that Manuel had died when he fell from a roof while carrying an air conditioning unit. Dutch assured him that wasn't a crime, but Eduardo told them that Jamison had convinced him it was. He also told them they had buried Manuel in Jamison's grounds because he didn't want to have his work halted. Dutch and Claudette went there and started digging up Manuel's body. When Jamison saw them, they arrested him.

When Vic Mackey and the Strike Team arrested Margos Dezerian and some of his associates of the Armenian Mafia, Claudette interrogated Dezerian's associate. However, he refused to talk. As she was checking some information, Officer Julien Lowe came to her to ask her some advice on whether to testify against Mackey or not, although he didn't give him the names. She told him that if he felt that whatever he had seen was serious enough, he should report it. Claudette and Dutch then gave a briefing to Aceveda of what they had found on Margos Dezerian's house. She was also one of the first to arrive at the cage, when Margos killed another prisoner.

Personality

A veteran detective, Claudette is the self-appointed voice of morality at the Barn and often butts heads with Vic Mackey over his tactics.

Family

Claudette has been divorced twice and raised two daughters, Bonnie and Rebecca. Her father, Bryce, sometimes refers to her as "Peaches," much to her partner's amusement. She starts dating James Freeman (played by Rif Hutton) in Season 3, and implies that she still is in Season 5, but it is said that he is no longer in her life in Season 7.

Career

Claudette has been on the police force for more than 25 years, and was one of the few female African American officers in the department at that time. During her early days at "The Barn," she went against the lead detective on the case and ended up solving the crime. This earned the respect of Detective Dutch Wagenbach, who requested that he be partnered with Claudette.

At the start of the third season, Claudette is supposed to take over as captain of The Barn, but David Aceveda stays throughout the rest of the season, and even steals some of Claudette's new ideas. At the end of season three, Claudette is being groomed to take over running the Barn as the new Captain. But she loses the promotion when she charges a public defender with negligence, resulting in countless convictions being overturned.

In season 5, Claudette admits to Dutch that she has had lupus for fifteen years and that it has been flaring up recently. Claudette collapses at the end of the seventh episode of season five, following a particularly harrowing interrogation. She returns to the Barn shortly thereafter, and is soon appointed to Captain after bringing Steve Billings' shortcomings to the attention of the Assistant Chief.

Relationships

• Dutch and Claudette
• Vic and Claudette