Cop and a Half
1993 film by Henry Winkler

Cop and a Half is a 1993 American family buddy cop-comedy film directed by Henry Winkler, and stars Burt Reynolds, Norman D. Golden II and Ray Sharkey in his final role. Reynolds plays veteran cop Nick McKenna who reluctantly takes eight-year-old boy Devon Butler (Golden) as his partner to solve a murder investigation.
Cop and a Half opened at #1 in the U.S. and grossed $40.7 million worldwide against a $14 million budget. The film was followed by a lower budgeted, direct-to-DVD sequel, Cop and a Half: New Recruit (2017).
Plot
Devon Butler is an eight-year-old boy who lives in Tampa, Florida with his grandmother Rachel in a small apartment. Devon dreams of being a cop. He watches police TV shows, knows police procedures and plays cops and robbers with his friend Raymond Sanchez. One day, while snooping around in a warehouse, he witnesses a murder. He goes to the police station to report the crime where he meets Captain Rubio and Detective Nick McKenna, who dislikes children. The police try and get information out of Devon, but he refuses to give the information unless they make him a cop.
“Cop and a Half” enters the record as 1993 film by Henry Winkler. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Half, film and Henry can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Cop and a Half” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Half, film and Henry provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1961779. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1993 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cop and a Half” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.