Jersey City Cop Wins Latest 'Survivor'

A police officer from Jersey City is the latest winner of CBS' "Survivor," taking the game's $1 million prize.

Tony Vlachos celebrates his Survivor win (CBS)

Despite not being well-liked by his fellow cast members, Tony Vlachos was the near unanimous choice of the show's jury on the finale. “I wasn’t a villain, I was just making strategic moves to save myself,” Vlachos said during the show, according to the Jersey Journal.

Jersey City Council President Rolando Lavarro credited Vlachos' "street smarts" for helping him outwit, outplay and outlast everyone else on the Philipino island of Cagayan. "A Jersey City cop got it done," he told the Journal.

Lavarro says the council plans to honor Vlachos' accomplishment upon his return.

Several jury members were critical of Vlachos' tactic of making promises and swearing the truthfulness of statements on his police badge, wife, late father and daughter. "I don't regret it because at the moment (I said those things) I meant it," he tells the reality show website Gold Derby. "My heart was in the right place, but my brain wasn't. Later I got the chance to say, 'You know what? The brain is going to take over the heart.' My mind was all over the place."

"Survivor" host Jeff Probst was happy that Vlachos was rewarded for "playing hard" during the show. "Tony is one of the most electrifying players/characters we’ve ever had. You can’t anticipate what he’s going to do and then when he does it you are often stunned at the manner in which he did it," he told Entertainment Weekly/

Vlachos is credited with saving the life of a man in Allendale as he moved into his family's new home in Allendale. The 69-year-old man had a massive heart attack and Vlachos did compressions on the man's chest to restart his heart according to the Journal.