Gil Hill, Detroit police officer in life and onscreen in ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ dies at 84
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Version 0 of 1. Gil Hill, a former Detroit City Council member and one-time mayoral candidate better known to movie fans as the salty-tongued police inspector Douglas Todd in three “Beverly Hills Cop” films, died Feb. 29 at a hospital in Detroit. He was 84. A family spokesman, Chris Jackson, confirmed the death. Detroit media outlets said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Hill spent 30 years with the Detroit Police Department and about a dozen years on the City Council. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2001. He was head of the city’s homicide division when he landed the supporting role in 1984’s action-comedy, “Beverly Hills Cop.” In the film, Todd was boss to Eddie Murphy’s character, Detective Axel Foley. Todd, who was killed off early in the third film in the series, often would erupt with expletives because of Foley’s rule-bending investigative methods. Mr. Hill was elected city council president in November 1997, unseating incumbent Maryann Mahaffey. It was his third four-year term on the council. As a council member, Mr. Hill supported casino gambling in the city and helped broker deals for new baseball and football stadiums downtown. He finished second to then-state Rep. Kwame Kilpatrick (D) in the 2001 Detroit mayoral primary and lost a close race to Kilpatrick in the November general election. Gilbert Roland Hill was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 5, 1931. He grew up in Washington and was raised by his mother, who worked as a domestic. He graduated from Cardozo High School in 1949, then entered the Air Force. Military service took him to the Detroit area, and he stayed there after his discharge. He worked for the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department before joining the police force in 1959. “I loved being a detective,” he told the Detroit Free Press in 2001. “I was good at it. At one time, I would have rated myself among any of the best homicide detectives in the world.” His wife, Delores Hooks, died in 2015. Survivors include three children; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren, the Free Press reported. Read more Washington Post obituaries : |