copyright 2025, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media,
Jump Cut, No. 63, summer 2025

A patriarchal capitalist vision of justice as presented on FX’s The Shield

By Laura Langlade

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.

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.

Though Mackey often faces pushback from others, typically non-white and non-male characters, the show implicitly permits his disturbing behavior through the establishment of his patriarchal role of father. Ortner insists:

“Patriarchy as a social formation of power relations always has two sides, one predicated on threat and domination by those above over those below, and the other predicated on love and protection of those above to those below. The protective side of patriarchy is particularly relevant in family organization, but it is also especially visible in the context of the patriarchal organization of the police. Indeed, it is this that gives us the most visible and hateful aspect of police brutality beyond the beating or killing itself: the impunity of the beaters and killers” (2022: 148).

Within this context, the series frames Mackey as that which holds the line against complete unrest in Farmington. Like the ideal father figure, he protects his home (Farmington) and family (its residents) and turns to corporal punishment against those who threaten the safety of his dependents. Especially in the first season of the series, Mackey is regularly rescuing innocent women and children from drugs, exploitative pimps, pedophiles, gang-members and other horrors that await the innocents of Farmington the moment they step out their front door.

Chopra-Gant in his writing on The Shield describes how the series places Mackey as protector of the public. It does so by depicting other officers’ personal lives at the end of the pilot episode. Wyms goes home to her golden retriever, Danny goes on a date, Aceveda cradles his baby, while Dutch in latex gloves with a sponge cleans feces out of his desk drawer (due to a prank played on him earlier in the episode) (Chopra-Gant, 2012). Meanwhile, Mackey and the Strike Team load their weapons and pile into a van preparing for a drug raid. Communicating to audiences that Mackey and the Strike Team are never off the clock. While his power is enforced by violence, his propensity to protect the women and children of Farmington allows for (certain) viewers to consider Mackey’s vigilante justice comforting. Shawn Ryan, the show’s creator explains:

“Vic cuts corners, but when it comes to your kid, he’s exactly the kind of bastard you want on the street…Vic speaks to something in the American people, and he does embody a very contemporary dilemma.” (Marshall, 2009).

Vitale argues that in popular media, justice often comes in the form of revenge. These “revenge fantasies”, as he refers to them, play out often on The Shield.The series continuously reminds viewers that in Farmington violence is an everyday occurrence: gang activity, drugs, murder, and rape are part of daily life. This structuring, perhaps inadvertently, communicates to viewers that Farmington demands more police action and harsher police tactics. Much of the justice doled out on The Shield takes place on the streets, by the Strike Team, or in the interrogation room, typically by Wyms and Dutch. Viewers are never taken inside the courtroom; the purposeful avoidance of any judicial settings contributes to the perception that a criminal’s just desserts get served on the streets. To further establish this point, the few times the series does take audiences into penitentiary spaces, they are depicted as under the control of criminals who thrive within this space. These scenes imply that offenders fare better in prison than they do on the streets of Farmington, thanks to Mackey’s stronghold. Thus, on The Shield, criminals’ punishments are meted out by police, not judges.

This establishes a central tenet of the series- that justice often cannot be achieved within the confines of the law, in the courts, and with prison sentences. To this point, the episodes usually present two methods of crime control. First, the interrogation, often helmed by Wyms and Dutch, sometimes with a parent or lawyer present. These interrogations last hours, sometimes continuing over days or weeks until offenders finally admit to their crimes. Within the interrogation room, there’s a sense of relief when a criminal confesses their transgressions; it’s palpable to both the detectives and the accused. The interrogation room becomes a place of truth, where the wheels of justice turn, albeit slowly. Compare these scenes to Mackey and the Strike Team’s chaotic car chases, beatdowns, running down alleyways and jumping over fences to grab suspects by the collar. Mackey’s interrogations, for example, have involved driving gang members into enemy territory threatening to leave them, holding someone over a building’s edge, forcing a suspect’s head into a snake tank, or just an old fashioned gun to the head.

However disturbing Mackey’s actions are, if we interpret them on a different scale, within the confines of neoliberal capitalism, his actions do get results. Within current social conditions, for example, hyper-consumption and human rights abuses are inextricably linked (Pérez & Esposito, 2010). Although such a juxtaposition is traditionally made in considering the creation of tangible items like fast-fashion clothes and sweat-shop labor, the way consumers ignore this relation can also be applied to how they overlook the more violent aspects of police work. As Ryan suggested, people are often satisfied to ignore the plight of non-white citizens in low income neighborhoods, as long as they feel safer. Thus the most brutal policing appears to get the most satisfactory results.

In season two Wyms found Mackey to have facilitated the physical assault of Adam, an innocent man, because he suspected that he might have been involved in the murder of teenage boy:

“WYMS: You allowed an innocent man to get the shit kicked outta him.
MACKEY: He’s not innocent. He’s a pedophile. You should’ve seen the diseased crap we found at his place.
WYMS: But he’s innocent of this crime.
MACKEY: Well, I’m sure he’ll think twice before cruising the schoolyard and committing his next crime.
WYMS: But he’s innocent now! You just don’t get that do ya?” (S2E12).

The exchange places Wyms as an anchoring force in the Barn,[1][open endnotes in new window] maintaining a strong code of ethics, balanced by a cynical awareness of Mackey. They have two visions of justice. Wyms sees honor in following the law, while Mackey views the law as a starting point from which to apprehend and intimidate criminals. The series sets up an interplay between these two iterations of policing, Wyms seeks justice after a crime has been perpetrated; Mackey hopes to prevent crimes from being committed. This is the crux of The Shield’s position on U.S. policing- that the most effective policing is the most violent and inhumane and has little regard for codified law.

Nicholas Ray argues,

“The Shield’s symbolic universe is so constructed that when Mackey suspends or is required to suspend law in the name of law, the result is habitually engineered to be safely to the benefit of the juridical order” (Ray, 2012).

Mackey’s propensity for using brutality for good tilts the audience in his favor. For instance, this happens when he spearheads the investigation and subsequent arrest of gang members planning to get school children addicted to heroin (S2E5), and again when he helps solve a gruesome massacre of women and children at a domestic violence shelter (S2E6). His desire to protect the women and children of Farmington extends beyond the clock, for example, when he helps Connie, a drug-addicted sex worker, detox from crack, quitting cold turkey so she can regain custody of her son, Brian (S1E10). Chopra-Gant explains that the show’s

“specific anxiety about children [and women] is actually symptomatic of The Shield’s more general symbolic deployment of the family- with Mackey as its patriarchal head- as a metaphor for society as a whole” (Chopra-Gant, 2012).

Earlier in the series audiences witnessed Mackey’s tender relationship with Connie; he tried his best to keep her safe and help her regain custody of her son. After her death (S2E6) his run-ins with other sex-workers and addicts are brutal, belying a viewer’s belief that Mackey’s paternal powers are used to inform a moral compass.

Farrah, a friend of Connie’s, requests his help in investigating her friend’s murder, initially Mackey refuses:

“FARRAH: My girl gets murdered, and you don’t give a shit? Don’t care I’m next?
MACKEY: By me, that’s euthanasia.
FARRAH: Vic…
MACKEY: I’ve already been down this road with this slut, her mouth is only good for two things and one of them is lying through her teeth.” (S7E7)

The vulgar disregard with which he treats Farrah is illustrative of a larger shift for Mackey. The abuse he now exercises over his “families” stems from his own control and power— the badge. In fact, once Mackey is threatened by the loss of his badge, he heavily leans on other markers of power to enforce authority, namely his maleness. In the same episode we see his treatment of Farrah set in stark contrast to Shane Vendrell, another member of the Strike Team’s, treatment of another sex worker on the case, whom Vendell vows to protect. Throughout The Shield, Vendrell, Mackey’s right-hand-man, causes the most chaos within the Strike Team, and is the greatest threat to Mackey’s paternal position within the team.

Chopra-Gant attributes this to Vendrell’s own position as a new father within the later seasons:

“Vendrell’s increasingly belligerent attitude toward Mackey can be interpreted as a sign of his refusal to remain in a subordinate position to the Strike Team now he is about to become a father himself: it is a claim of ownership of the law of the father that challenges Mackey’s exclusive possession of that authority (137).

Ironically, at the end of the episode Mackey discovers Farrah had set him up to kill her pimp. After he verbally and physically assaulted her, she mockingly yelled to him as he walked away:

“I still got you handling my business for me. May not be so pretty anymore, but I am walking, talking pussy, and you let me lead you by your dick! You ever thought about cutting it off? Freeing your mind once and for all?” (S7E7)

In some sense Farrah’s lines reestablish Mackey as righteous, his original suspicions about her materializing in the final minutes of the episode. However, coming at the eleventh hour of the series, the sentiment of Farrah’s statement is telling, especially as a bookend to the series. Mackey’s identity as a member of the LAPD and as a man propel him through the series; his selfhood is enmeshed with fatherhood, virility, alpha-brutality, and a continuous conflict with women in power. I contend that Farrah’s use of the term “dick” acts as a metonym for his badge. Mackey’s enforcement of the law has always been steeped in hyper-masculinity. Her suggestion of “cutting it off” and freeing himself comes at a time where he has only ten days until he must forcibly surrender his badge. Thus, Farrah’s mocking words beg him to consider what life will be like when something so intrinsic to his identity is removed, whether that be his “dick” or his badge.

Mackey’s hold on the Strike Team and his own family slowly unravels as he struggles to keep his job. After the murder of Lem[2] in season five, the Strike Team slowly cannibalizes itself. The series ends with Vendrell poisoning his pregnant wife and son and killing himself to avoid prison. Meanwhile, Ronnie is arrested; Mackey incriminates Ronnie in a confession, and signs himself onto ICE, receiving full immunity for his crimes. As punishment Mackey is forced off the streets and into a menial desk job, while his ex-wife, Corrine, and his children are put into protective custody. The final episode closes with Mackey finishing his first day at the office with the creeping realization that his misdeeds have completely isolated him.             

On his desk he places pictures of his children, that he can no longer see, and Lem, the Strike Team member murdered by Vendrell. Sitting with the proof of his failures as a leader, protector, and father, Mackey walks towards the window and watches police cars with sirens blaring as they drive down the street. He takes his gun out of a safe, tucks it into his pants, and leaves the office with a smirk. Chopra-Gant (2012) argues that despite being fully disempowered, official forms of authority have never given Mackey his power anyway:

“In [the ending’s] ambiguity it preserves the possibility that Mackey has not been defeated at all—that even though outside official channels of law enforcement, he will continue to operate unseen as the maverick protector of a society from which he must always remain apart (143)”

Such an ending reiterates Ortner’s assertion that the police operate with the presumption that white men are superior and hold status that is vital to the basic functioning of society. Therefore, Mackey’s power emanates from his identity as a white male and not necessarily as a codified member of the police force.

While one could dismiss The Shield as a revenge fantasy, the reality is that The Shield’s origins are not based in fiction. The Strike Team was a task force designed to focus on gang-related crime; these gang-focused task forces began to emerge in the 1980s and 90s. By 2003, there were an estimated 360 gang units in the United States (Vitale, 2017). Vitale notes that these gang units typically follow a similar pattern, becoming isolated and insular from their co-workers. He continues:

“Their specialized function and intelligence-gathering aspect lend them an air of secrecy and expertise that they cultivate to reduce outside supervision or accountability.”

This result of the gang units’ specialization was evidenced most notably during the Rampart Scandal of 1999, which exposed the corruption within the LAPD CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit.[3] During the investigation CRASH unit officers were accused of false arrests, unlawful shootings, beatings, robberies, and drug dealing. As a result, hundreds of prior convictions were overturned, several officers were forced to retire or incarcerated, and the city paid out millions in damages to the families affected by their crimes (Vitale, 2017). In that regard, The Shield truly was “pulling back the curtain” on the corruption that exists within U.S. policing.

To conclude, the series ends with the most vicious characters, the members of the Strike Team, dead, in prison, or forced off the streets. The assumption that the purge of the Strike Team, the “bad apples”, will allow for morality to prevail in the Barn and within Farmington is a naïve one. In the pilot episode Wyms and Aceveda shared the following exchange:

“ACEVEDA: Doesn’t bother you, the things he does?
WYMS: I don’t judge other cops.
ACEVEDA: Mackey’s not a cop, he’s Al Capone with a badge.
WYMS: Al Capone made money by giving people what they wanted. What people want these days is to make it to their cars without getting mugged, come home from work, see their stereo still there, hear about some murder in the Barrio, find out the next day the police got the guy. If having those things means some cop roughs up some nigger or some spick in the ghetto, well, as far as most people are concerned it’s ‘don’t ask don’t tell.’” (S1E1).

Here, Wyms gets to the heart of neoliberalism’s impact on policing. What becomes most important is the protection of property and the speed and efficiency at which crimes are dealt with, unfortunately, many citizens are willing to sacrifice the how. As the series progresses Wyms becomes increasingly intolerant of Mackey and the Strike Team’s lawless behavior. In the final season, as the new captain of the Barn, she refutes her advice to Aceveda in season one, stating, “We can’t expect justice out there when we don’t demand it in our own house,” (S7E11), but the call has always been coming from inside the house. In the United States, policing as an institution is built on racism, classism, oppression, and violence. In this regard, the Strike Team’s very existence is a manifestation of urban policing policies.

The normalization of the brutality perpetuated on The Shield rests upon the dehumanization of the non-white and low-income citizens living in Farmington. However, this is by design, as Coleman argued, within the context of the ever-developing urban sprawls, free-market capitalism dictates that certain communities lower property values, risking the capital of wealthy property owners. In this sense, policing has been a street cleaning service of sorts, roughing up and arresting the homeless, loiterers, drug dealers, addicts, and others who dare to ruin the illusion of safety and the aesthetics of a gentrified urban zone. Ultimately, Mackey and the Strike Team operated within the boundaries of the law as interpreted by the logic of neoliberalism, with their ultimate fault being turning on each other. The Shield reminds audiences that the unraveling of the Strike Team and Mackey originates not from their near constant enactments of police brutality, but from the murder of Terry Crowley, and Lem, two white members of the LAPD. The Shield positions masculinity and whiteness as that which controls chaos in the multicultural streets of Farmington, at the same time exposing the hierarchy of worth placed on citizens, which informs enactments of justice within and beyond the constrictions of the law.

Notes

References

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