Stephen Downing, a Los Angeles Police Department officer who turned to a TV writing and producing career that included work on such series as Adam-12, Kojak and MacGyver, died of sepsis November 20 in Long Beach, California, hospital. He was 87.
His death was announced by his son Michael, a retired deputy chief of the L.A.P.D.
“Throughout his law enforcement career, dating back to 1965, he brought his deep knowledge of policing to the screen,” his son wrote in an online tribute. “As a screenwriter, producer and showrunner, he worked on many acclaimed series and made for television movies: MacGyver, T.J. Hooker, Emergency, Kojak, Quincy, Knight Rider, F/X the TV Series, Police Story, Police Woman, RoboCop The TV Series, Dragnet, Adam-12, and Walking Tall.
According to The New York Times, Downing was the assistant watch commander at the 77th Division in South Los Angeles when in 1968 Jack Webb, the Dragnet actor and producer, phoned the precinct seeking a technical adviser for a new cop show he was planning to be called Adam-12. Downing, who had studied creative writing in college, got the job and soon advanced from adviser to script writer.
Downing, born October 28, 1938, in Hanford, California, would go on to work on episodes of numerous police dramas throughout the 1970s and ’80s, moving into producing in 1982 with Knight Rider. His longest stint was with MacGyver, where he took various producing titles for the show’s entire 1985-1992 run. It was Downing who suggested that the show’s star, Richard Dean Anderson, portray the title character armed only with a Swiss Army knife and lots of ingenuity.
In a 2015 interview with the MacGyver Project blog, Downing explained the origins of the gadget-happy title character. “You may note that in the pilot that MacGyver uses a gun,” he said. “It was my suggestion that we should demonstrate to our audience that a guy like MacGyver should have the moral constitution against using a gun and the smarts to avoid its use – which also made for many interesting ways to get around it.“
Downing joined the LAPD in 1960 and retired from the departmenht in 1980. He often wrote about law enforcement issues, most recently on Substack, and was an outspoken critic of the war on drugs and the militarization of policing. In an October 26, 2025, post, Downing criticized the Trump Administration’s policy authorizing deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
“The doctrine being written at sea today will be the justification for domestic violence tomorrow,” Downing wrote. “Once a president learns he can kill without due process abroad, the temptation to do it on U.S. soil follows close behind.” Recalling a big 1970s-era drug bust by the LAPD, Downing, calling the Trump policy “extrajudicial killing,” continued, “We relied on evidence, not ideology. We honored the Constitution, not a political fantasy. Everyone came home alive. We could do that again—if we remembered that the mission of law enforcement is to serve justice, not bury it at sea.”
Downing is survived by his wife of 67 years, Adrienne, children Michael, Tambree, and Julie; son-in-law Hank and daughter-in-law Michele six grandchildren, three and six great grandchildren.
