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.
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Biography
Law enforcement
Adamson joined the Chicago Police Department in the late 1950s. He served in the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) as a detective sergeant until 1974. One of his best-known cases, involving a habitual thief named Neil McCauley, was the basis for the 1995 film Heat.
After retiring from law enforcement, he worked for Allstate insurance.
Film and television
Adamson met Michael Mann in the late 1970s, when the latter was working as a writer on the television series Police Story. 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. He advised on Mann's film Heat (1995), based on his 1964 McCauley case.
Additionally, Adamson 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.
Later life and death
He lived in Las Vegas for many years, before retiring to Roseburg, Oregon. He wrote a book, The Toughest Cop in America, in 2001.
Adamson died in 2008 from lung cancer at age 71. Michael Mann's 2009 film Public Enemies was dedicated to his memory.