Cops creator John Langley dies at 78 of apparent heart attack
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John Langley, the creator and executive producer of the series Cops, has died. He was 78.
The reality TV pioneer succumbed to an apparent heart attack on Saturday in Baja, Mexico, his representatives confirmed to PEOPLE. Langley was competing in the Coast to Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250 off-road race. TMZ reported that his son Zak was with him at the time.
Langley and his production partner Malcolm Barbour's Cops premiered on Fox in 1989 and followed law enforcement during patrol, calls for service, and other activities including narcotic stings. The series came before shows like The Real World and Survivor, and is seen as one of the earliest and most unvarnished reality TV programs. In 2007, Langley told EW that he chose Inner Circle's song "Bad Boys" as Cops' theme song, because "I was a Bob Marley fan - still am - and I thought it would be very interesting to counterpoint law enforcement with reggae."
In 2011, Cops became the longest-running television show on Fox (since surpassed by The Simpsons), and in 2013, it moved to the Spike network, now Paramount Network. It ran for 32 seasons and over 1,000 episodes, scoring four Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Informational Series.
Cops' last new episode aired May 2020, and a month later it was canceled by Paramount in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the ensuing protests against police brutality. Even before, the series faced criticism throughout its run for elevating police perspectives while reinforcing harmful stereotypes against low-income, Black and Latino individuals as perpetrators of violent crime.
Born in Oklahoma City in 1943, Langley served in the U.S. Army's intelligence unit in the early 1960s before attending Cal State Dominguez Hills and later U.C. Irvine for grad school. Langley told the TV Academy in 2009, "I'm a kid of the '60s. I'm sort of anti-authoritarian by nature. If you told me I was going to do a show about cops, I would have said, 'What am I going to call it, Pigs?'"
In addition to Cops, Langley's production company was also behind the 2009 crime drama Brooklyn's Finest, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, and Ellen Barkin. He also produced the reality series Jail, Vegas Strip, Anatomy of a Crime, Undercover Stings, and more. Langley received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
Langley is survived by his wife, four children (including son Morgan, who oversees Langley Productions and is also an executive producer of Cops), and seven grandchildren.
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