Chuck Adamson

Charles Fredrick Adamson (June 11, 1936 – February 22, 2008) was an American police officer, screenwriter, television producer, and actor. He served with the Chicago Police Department as a detective sergeant from 1958 to 1974. He later worked as a technical advisor to filmmaker Michael Mann, and created the television series Crime Story, which Mann produced.¹

Adamson joined the Chicago Police Department in the late 1950s. He served in the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) as a detective sergeant until 1974.¹² One of his best-known cases, involving a habitual thief named Neil McCauley, was the basis for the 1995 film Heat.²

After retiring from law enforcement, he worked for Allstate insurance.³

Adamson met Michael Mann in the late 1970s, when the latter was working as a writer on the television series Police Story.² Mann hired Adamson as a technical advisor for his feature directorial debut Thief (1981). Adamson helped secure the involvement of several real-life police officers and criminals to appear in the film for added authenticity, including his former partner Dennis Farina, and appeared in the film as a mob henchman. He later worked in a similar capacity on Beverly Hills Cop (1984).

Mann later hired Adamson to write episodes of Miami Vice. Adamson then created the critically-acclaimed television crime drama Crime Story, also produced by Mann, for which he won a People's Choice Award.⁴ He advised on Mann's film Heat (1995), based on his 1964 McCauley case.²

Additionally, Mann also made acting appearances in two films for Robert Redford — A River Runs Through It (1992) and Quiz Show (1994) — and in the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. He was also featured on a 1992 episode of the television documentary Top Cops.

He lived in Las Vegas for many years, before retiring to Roseburg, Oregon.³ He wrote a book, The Toughest Cop in America, in 2001.⁵

Adamson died in 2008 from lung cancer at age 71.⁶ Michael Mann's 2009 film Public Enemies was dedicated to his memory.