Gil Hill the former Detroit City Council and police official who also played Eddie Murphy’s boss in the “Beverly Hills Cop” films died Monday, The Detroit News reported. He was 84.

“Gil had been recently hospitalized and was on the road to recovery,” family spokesman Chris Jackson told reporters. “We are relieved that his passing was peaceful and painless.”

Hill was known to moviegoers in “Beverly Hills Cop” as the tough Inspector Todd, whose job it was to keep Murphy’s character Axel Foley in line, warning him in colorful language to stay out of crime investigations in which he had no business — to which Foley never listened. He reprised his role in the film’s two sequels.

“(Director Martin) Brest just told me, ‘There’s a part in this movie that fits you perfectly,’ ” Hill told The News in 1994. “And I just said, `Sure, pal.’ ”

However in real life, Hill had a long career in public service, first as a member of the Detroit Police Department in which he served 30 years, eventually becoming head of its homicide division. In 1989, he was elected to the city council and became its president in 1997. He ran for mayor of Detroit in 2001, but narrowly lost to then-state senator Kwame Kilpatrick.

Read more at JETMag.com.