A patriarchal capitalist vision
of justice as presented on
FX’s The Shield
U.S. policing as we know it originated with the goal of protecting the capital of wealthy citizens. In the Northern states this took the form of policing certain immigrant groups (namely the Irish, Italian and German). In the South, slave patrols formed to return enslaved people attempting escape and to prevent slave revolts and uprisings (Potter, 2013). Unsurprisingly, racism has become inextricably linked to police and policing, regardless of the diversification of police ranks. Racial differentiation is widely recognized as a tactic in policing, with scholars noting discrepancies in outcomes where Black citizens interact with the police versus their white counterparts (Parks & Kirby, 2022). In addition, as sociologist Micol Seigel explains, police are state-sanctioned “violence workers” whose power is maintained through their authorization and capacity for violence (Vitale, 2017). This violence is strongly gender coded; according to 2023 statistics, 86.2% of police officers in the United States are male (Korhonen, 2024). While women were introduced into the police force in the mid 1800s, their jobs were typically clerical, social services and prison matron positions. Not until Title VII of the 1991 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited against discrimination based on identity, did more doors open for women and non-white people to occupy law enforcement positions. However, as made clear by statistics, we can surmise that systemic patriarchy, like racism, is culturally ingrained in U.S. policing.
This article examines the policing of the fictional district of Farmington, Los Angeles on the TV series The Shield (FX, 2002-2008) in order to trace its delineation of policing within the context of patriarchal neoliberal capitalism. The seriesfollows Vic Mackey and the Strike Team, a specialized gang task force. Whilst The Shield depicts a multicultural cast of characters policing the streets, Mackey’s brutality and white paternal racism seem necessary to keep the streets of Farmington in order. Ultimately establishing indicators for who and what is worth protecting.
The moral conundrums presented in The Shield urge viewers to consider the function of policing at its core and what type of policing is most effective. Throughout the seven seasons viewers watched Mackey and the Strike Team go to extreme lengths to close their cases: regularly beating, threatening, and ignoring the rights of Black and brown civilians. The series explicitly and implicitly communicates that the answers to policing a diverse community successfully relies on white paternal racism and violence. Further, within the context of neoliberal capitalism, policing institutionally cannot function empathetically or ethically and must value speed, efficiency and economic value, which exigencies often lead to violence. Thus, reinforcing The Shield’s message delivered to viewers over a decade ago: the patriarchal capitalist ideologies that American policing was founded on is that which corrupts its basic functions.
Considering that racism and masculinity are two ideological pillars which underpin policing, it is no wonder that the types of people attracted to the profession often revel in perpetuating violent acts of racism and misogyny. Within the context of The Shield, Vic Mackey and the Strike Team regularly exercise their power over the citizens of Farmington not only to enforce the law but also to maintain their own self-interests. As the series progresses we see ever more clearly that the Strike Team avoids repercussions for their actions because of their willingness to bend or break the law to protect the interests of Farmington’s elite.
Ideologies influenced by neoliberal capitalism have shaped policing measures throughout the United States, especially in urban zones. Roy Coleman argues that boundaries are shaped in cities through “individual and institutional conceptions of abjection and hostility toward difference” (2003: 26). While these boundaries exist within the physical geography of urban development, they are maintained in part by moral boundaries, Coleman continues, “underpinned by fear of the other, and constructed along class, gender, ethnic, sexual, age, and disability lines” (2003: 26). In addition, he contends that as this moral boundary making evolves, free market capitalism’s influence is clear, with non-consumption then framed as a form of deviance. It is a kind of “re-moralization” within urban areas that reinforces the top-down ideology imposed by the ruling class and enforced by policing that values property over people (Coleman, 2003).
This re-moralization confounds boundaries between private and public spheres, blurring the uses of those spaces. Moral justifications in turn reinforce the hyper-visibility of socio-economic inequality. Coleman discusses how this process works:
“Strategies enacted under neoliberal rule are increasing the divergence of control tasks between public and private sectors that open up spaces for the development of crime prevention projects which are not necessarily directed at ‘crime’ in the legal sense of the word” (2003: 27).
This melding of the public and the private partially explains why law abiding citizens are increasingly placed under surveillance, a form of penal control. The reason may be solely the space they occupy within an urban area. Loïc Wacquant (1999) refers to this notion as the “prison of poverty.” Wacquant argues that police purposely establish prison-like surveillance in low-income neighborhoods, resulting in the confinement of its citizens in the perpetual trappings of the justice system. In social and economic terms, policing becomes a function of managing poverty as opposed to protecting innocent civilians. Thus surveillance merges goals of crime control with social and economic “prevention,” allowing police to wantonly target those perceived as ruining the quality or aesthetic of urban life and development. Ergo when policing ceaselessly targets homeless, queer, non-white, or low-income communities, it is functioning precisely as it means to.
The justification for the hostile treatment of othered communities and individuals is not only dictated by a free-market capitalist ideology, the core of the institution of policing itself is rotted. The police in the United States have a long and established history of beating and murdering Black people with impunity. Despite the fact that the targeting of Black citizens, especially young men, comes from an era when the police consisted solely of white officers, diversifying its ranks has done little to assuage this. To explain, Sherry B. Ortner urges that we consider police identity and interactions beyond the realm of race, arguing that police function within a racialized patriarchy:
“If we control for the changing racial composition of the force, we still have a constant in the equation: the police are overwhelmingly male… I want to focus on the police as, collectively and organizationally, partaking of a particular kind of patriarchal form that is conducive to both violence in general, and violence against what I call “impure” others—Black people, women, gay persons, and differently abled persons” (2022: 144).
Further, within a racialized patriarchal framework, white male police officers are positioned as an ideal prototype, what she refers to as the “superior male person” (2022: 149). She contends:
“highly formalized patriarchal structures both select for these qualities in the recruitment of their membership and explicitly or implicitly dedicate themselves to enhancing those qualities within the context of their work” (2022: 149).
In this sense, law-abiding citizens who do not fit within the framework of heterosexual, white, able-bodied male will not necessarily be equally protected by the police.
Since the BLM (Black Lives Matter) protests in 2020, incited by the state-sanctioned murder of George Floyd, police reform has once again entered public debate. As the discussion continues about combating police brutality, proposed solutions have included diversifying the police, embracing community policing, and strengthening accountability measures (Vitale, 2017). However, a more diverse police force does little to prevent racial profiling and bias (Cobbina & Vitale, 2021). Moreover, “at the department level, more diverse police forces fare no better in measures of community satisfaction, especially among nonwhite residents” (Vitale, 2017).
These problems are prominently featured in The Shield. Whilst the Strike Team is made up of white men, their adversaries are typically women and people of color who have higher ranking positions in the department. Scholar Mike Chopra-Gant (2012) discusses this narrative in the series, that the purveyors of legal and moral authority are consistently entrusted in female and non-white characters:
“By introducing a racial dimension to the association of particular characters with these values of law and morality, on the one hand, and with “natural” justice, on the other, The Shield conveys a compelling sense that a successfully integrated multicultural society is inevitably dependent on the continuing power of the white patriarch” (133).
The series builds its characterization on a (masculine) idea of natural justice. This means that diversifying the ranks of Farmington’s police department, especially in positions of authority, does little to impact the institution’s function, much like in real life. In addition, the script repeatedly communicates to viewers that Mackey’s violent reinterpretation of justice is more productive, implying that white masculinity is most equipped to police non-white neighborhoods, echoing Ortner’s sentiment of perceived white male superiority on the force.
Both Coleman and Ortner recognize that forces beyond the purview of the law affect policing, especially in urban areas. In the context of neoliberalism Mackey’s productivity and speed at which he “solves” crimes make him an asset worth protecting for the elites, despite his actions ravaging the streets of Farmington. As the series progresses the Strike Team’s list of misdeeds grows longer and more reprehensible, however, their role within the department remains unthreatened (for a time) illuminating the privilege that stems from the permissibility allotted to them by the badge, and by extension, their masculinity. Such protection provided to cops by the badge exists beyond the fictional realm. As Vitale (2017) writes:
“Many [cops] engage in abuse based on race, gender, religion, or economic condition. Explicit and intentional racism is alive and well in American policing. We are asked to believe that these incidents are misdeeds of “a few bad apples.” But why does the institution of policing so continuously shield these misdeeds? … This sends an unambiguous message that officers are above the law and free to act on their own biases without consequence” (29-30).
The shielding of individuals who enforce the law from the law is one of the main functions of policing institutions. Like Vitale, Ortner refutes the “bad apple” concept, pointing to the existence of “a police torture site in Chicago, and about the fact that many policemen knew about it and did not report it” (2022: 147). Police violence is not the fault of one deranged individual but part of a collective ideology cultivated within departmental culture.
In The Shield it is understood that Mackey and his team share a collective identity as rule-breakers. This is sanctioned by the higher-ups in the department because, as Mackey puts it, “We knock down the doors that other cops don’t want to” (S1E2). However, a similar refusal to operate within the boundaries of the law occurs throughout the department. For example, after a police officer is shot, Danny explains to her trainee, Julien,
“Cop goes down, we reestablish our dominance on the streets. Someone mouths off, they hit the pavement, someone resists, we make sure they make a pit stop in the emergency room. We gotta make sure these assholes know who’s in charge” (S1E2).
When Dutch, a Farmington detective, helped Danny study for her sergeant’s exam they shared the following exchange:
“DANNY: I answered C.
DUTCH: No, it’s B. You have to report the infraction immediately to your commanding officer. There’s no latitude on that.
DANNY: Stupid rule. I mean, would you turn your partner in on something like that?
DUTCH: I know how I’d answer on the test” (S1E5).
In the final season of the series, detective Billings asks Dutch to help him intimidate an ex-sex offender, Irving Heep, into moving out of his ex-wife and teenage daughter’s neighborhood. Dutch refused, but later discovers Heep was detained by detectives of another district:
“BILLINGS: A cop helped another cop out. It’s called loyalty.
DUTCH: It’s wrong.
BILLINGS: Yea, well, if it’s so wrong, why don’t you turn me and half of the North Hollywood division in?” (S7E9).
To varying degrees all these cops/detectives knowingly discuss police functioning beyond the boundaries of the law. At the same time, many of these characters seem a moral center within the series, whether in a personal or professional capacity. Danny is regularly depicted as a dedicated officer, who, in the face of gendered harassment, promotes the camaraderie and collective identity encouraged by the LAPD. Dutch is often utilized as an example of how detective work is meant to operate, slow and by-the-book, rarely cutting corners. Dutch seemingly has the utmost respect for the rule of law, but still refuses to turn in a fellow officer for having someone falsely arrested.
The Shield regularly posits that Mackey’s goal is to prevent crime, and in this way, he’s compared to his by-the-book coworkers who (sometimes) dole out justice post-crime—as dictated by the law. Detective Claudette Wyms, especially, and Dutch, regularly, embody a moral high ground in their policing methods. Naturally, their cases take longer to solve, allowing for more innocent casualties. The series continuously asks viewers to consider the conflict between morality and law and order, reminding us that Mackey’s willingness to break the law is what allows for the immediate safety of innocent people.
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| Wyms (left) and Mackey (right) interrogate the same suspect, illustrating the stark contrast between their chosen policing methods (S1E12). | |
In the pilot a murdered woman’s young daughter, Jenny Reborg, goes missing. Dutch and Wyms discover she was sold into a pedophile ring through their routine police work. During the interrogation, the suspect refused to admit to his crimes or Jenny’s whereabouts. Dutch suggested they let him go and “tail him”, Wyms disagreed. During their argument the precinct captain, David Aceveda, asked Mackey to question the offender. He entered the interrogation room with a lighter, a bottle of whiskey, and a phonebook. Ignoring the suspect’s pleas for a lawyer, Mackey violently struck him. Mercifully for the viewers, Aceveda turns off the interrogation camera. Meanwhile, Wyms, Dutch, Aceveda, and the audience are left to grapple with the moral conundrum they have been presented. This tension is quickly remedied when Mackey gets an answer and they find Jenny, alive, locked in a dark closet of an abandoned apartment. These dramatized stakes force the viewer to consider whether breaking the law, in certain circumstances, is necessary to protect the innocent.
In episode two Mackey and the Strike Team watch as a young boy is beaten by gang members in an initiation. Mackey intentionally holds officers back, waiting for the beating to end before arresting those involved, including the young boy. This scene communicates to viewers that only some children are worth saving; establishing that victims are placed within a hierarchy of worth, based on race and class as Ortner indicated.
Mackey’s ruthlessness had been made abundantly clear in the pilot when Mackey murdered a member of his own Strike Team during a drug raid in the final minutes of the episode. Terry Crowley, the newest member of the Strike Team, was planted by captain Aceveda in order to report on Mackey’s crimes. The series repeatedly signals to viewers that of all Mackey’s abuses of power, this is his most unforgivable “sin”, and that which has the power to destroy him and the Strike Team. Eventually in the final episodes of the series after Mackey has lost his job, his team, and his family, he tells federal agent Olivia Murray, “I didn’t… I didn’t get to say goodbye to my children.” She responds, “You said goodbye to them the moment you shot another cop in the face” (S7E13). In the hierarchy of victims, the lives of police officers hold higher value than those they are hired to protect.
Ultimately the show dehumanizes the citizens of Farmington, permitting more rage and violence to be acted upon them in the name of enforcing the law. Such dehumanization occurs through the series’ narrative arc, pacing, and cinematography as each episode follows multiple cases, only some of which are solved. The repeated onslaught of new victims, suspects and offenders creates the illusion of never-ending violence and crime. The subjects become nameless amalgamations of victim and criminal, seemingly too stupid, too poor, or too violent to escape the perpetual cycle of violence in Farmington.
Elayne Rapping in her writing on representations of crime and popular television explains that the narrative arc of a traditional crime drama follows a basic formula of “crime, investigation, capture, and punishment” (Rapping, 2003). Series like The Shield have radically reformulated this digestible narrative. In her book Law and Justice as Seen on TV, Rapping (2003) considers how the reframing of the popular narrative is used to dehumanize offenders in the eyes of the viewer:
“The criminal, in such a narrative, no matter how amoral or vicious, is thus still a human being whose defects are theoretically understandable and therefore correctable. For this reason. Even the most vicious traditional crimes can be understood… [On series like The Shield]such medicalized, psychological, and sociological views of criminal behavior are gone. Instead, we are presented with a view of the criminal mind and behavior as less than human, as brutish, irrational, and inherently incapable of understanding or abiding by any legal code” (58).
In this sense, the dehumanization of suspects and offenders gives Mackey permission to enact rage and violence upon them. The Shield’s chaotic cinematography gives viewers a fly-on-the-wall experience, similar to watching the reality show Cops (Fox, 1989-). The realist illusion of authenticity lends itself to the larger picture being painted by the series—these stories are not completely fictional. Scott Rosenbaum, one of the series’ screenwriters, discussed the disdain those working on the series received from police:
“The LAPD was pissed off that we were telling a story that dove into some of the realities of what’s happening. We were truly pulling back the curtain” (Chilton, 2022).
Similar to Cops, the worldbuilding on The Shield creates the illusion that the countless neighborhoods on the “wrong side of the tracks” are filled with people who symbolically embody subhuman deviancy, typically marked by class, race, sexuality, or gender. Such a narrative presumption resonates with Coleman’s postulation discussed earlier that within the confines of urban zones neoliberal capitalism marks certain populations as a visible disruption. Further, Rapping suggests that:
“Two central roles of crime drama are to mark out and delineate the contours of “deviance” by sketching a portrait of a “normal” and legal standard against which the “outlaw” is measured” (Rapping, 2003).
On The Shield this dehumanization is communicated to audiences when suspects and offenders are forcefully placed in a chain link cage in the center of the Barn. The animalistic treatment of the citizens of Farmington happens literally (placing them in a cage) and figuratively, as the label “the Barn” suggests.
Despite The Shield’s presentation of justice and morality as more complicated than the average crime drama, the idea of police as maintaining a moral boundary between civilized existence and violent chaos is the same. This fictional thesis readily translates to the real world, where police and media frame deviance as a litmus test for one’s humanity. For example, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, the list goes on, had all been accused of minor transgressions which positioned them, to some, as permissible victims of state-sanctioned murder.
