Vic Mackey

Victor Mackey
First appearance	"Pilot" (episode 1.01)
Created by	Shawn Ryan
Portrayed by	Michael Chiklis
In-universe information
Nickname	Vic Mackey
Gender	Male
Title	Detective; Strike Team leader
Occupation	Los Angeles Police Department Police detective
Spouse	Corinne Mackey (ex-wife)
Children	Cassidy Mackey (daughter) Matthew Mackey (son) Megan Mackey (daughter) Lee Sofer (son)

Detective Victor "Vic" Mackey, portrayed by Michael Chiklis, is a fictional Los Angeles Police Department detective and leader of the Strike Team, a four-man anti-gang unit in the FX crime drama series The Shield. Mackey is a corrupt yet effective police officer; he steals from drug dealers, beats suspects and has committed murder on three occasions. Two of the victims were violent gangsters, though the first was an undercover officer trying to put Mackey and his team behind bars, despite their service to the community. Mackey sees his tactics as a means to an end. Despite his misdeeds, he is a devoted father, a loyal partner to his teammates and will readily protect those he sees as innocent victims.

On Bravo TV's countdown of the 100 Greatest Television Characters, Michael Chiklis described Mackey as "a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Dirty Harry."

Early life

Little is known about Mackey's early life, although he once mentioned that his father was a bricklayer. In Season Five, he told Lt. Jon Kavanaugh that he had been a cop for 14 years. In one of the DVD commentaries for Season Four, Michael Chiklis mentions that the main characters on the show are from the same areas as the actors who play them.

Mackey's morality

Vic Mackey's morality is a classic example of dualism. While he has a solid status as a family man, he has committed adultery with several women (including fellow officer Danielle "Danny" Sofer). He is sworn to uphold the law, yet regularly breaks it for professional and personal gain. Mackey's personality is often viewed as amoral or machiavellian, believing that "the ends justify the means." This has earned him comparisons to another popular television character, 24's Jack Bauer. However, this may also lead to his downfall, which he has narrowly avoided throughout the course of the series.

Despite all of the crimes and immoral acts he has committed, Vic is ironically considered the show's "hero." His brutality is usually directed towards dangerous criminals whom he considers deserving of their harsh treatment at his hands-i.e. rapists, child molesters and mass murderers. Even when he's broken the law himself, it's often been in the course of solving even more serious crimes. In the first Season finale episode, Vic cornered a teenager and threatened to plant crack cocaine on him unless he was told who murdered two police officers.

Character history

In the early days of the Strike Team, Mackey was nearly taken down when rookie Officer Julien Lowe caught him and the Strike Team stealing evidence from a crime scene (in this case, narcotics). However, Mackey obtained leverage against Lowe by catching him in a homosexual act and threatening to expose him. Although Julien vowed to deny Vic's allegations, Vic smugly retorted,

"I don't have to prove you're gay, in this house all I have to do is say it, with all the gory details."

A terrified Julien immediately caved in to his demands. After this, Vic has attempted to be friendly to Julien, with varying degrees of reception.

Early in the series, Mackey extorted money from drug dealers and openly stole their money or drugs. The purpose was to support him and his team's retirement and provide a legacy for their children. Later, he justified stealing gang money to help pay for his kids' autism treatments as well as alimony to his ex-wife Corrine. In the second season, Vic helped his ex-partner and training officer, Joe Clark, bring down the man who got him booted from the force, only to take a bullet in the alley in which they busted the perp.

Relationships

Relationship with Shane

He is loyal to his friends, but this has also come with a price. He helped bail his former best friend Shane Vendrell out of numerous predicaments, although Shane never learned his lesson. Mackey went to great lengths to save Curtis Lemansky from Jon Kavanaugh's clutches in Season 5, only to lose him to a grenade intentionally delivered by Shane. When Vic learned the truth, he was enraged and screamed,

"I had the chance to pull the trigger on you once, and didn't, and Lem lost his life because of it!"

He told Shane that if he ever saw him again, he would kill him.

Relationship with Aceveda

The tension between Mackey and David Aceveda has evolved in different ways since the birth of The Shield. In the first season Aceveda was heavily bent out to prove Mackey's guilt, putting out all his effort to take him down. While Mackey detested Aceveda's political ambitions, Aceveda continued to label Mackey as "Al Capone with a badge."

At the start of the second season, Aceveda, not wanting a scandal in the midst of his political career, agreed to watch Mackey's back if he could make Strike Team appear to clean up their act and exhibited professionalism at all times possible. This created a very subtle, bumpy friendship between the two. This "friendship," however, ended when Aceveda left for his City Council position, but not before writing a scathing letter that damaged Mackey's career.

At the end of the sixth season, Aceveda continued to push for progress on the San Marcos killings, a massacre of several Mexican immigrants by unknown assailants, mostly at the behest of Mexican real estate developer Cruz Pezuela, who was also financing his investigation committee into a possible run for mayor. Aceveda also used his political influence to ensure that Mackey was forced into early retirement at an imminent Review Board Hearing. However, events took a wild turn as the graphic photo taken by Juan Lozano of Aceveda's rape suddenly reappeared in the hands of Pezuela, who gave it to Vic as a way to save his job.

Vic attempted to use the photo against Aceveda, only to have it denounced as a fake and to have Aceveda's lawyer threaten him with a lawsuit for slander and blackmail. Mackey later returned with the memory card, the background story of the photo, and all the existing copies. Aceveda was stunned to hear about Cruz Pezuela's involvement in the photo and after listening to Mackey's theory, agreed to help him in his investigation into Pezuela's activities. The scope of the operation stunned the both of them;, Pezuela was helping the Mexican drug cartels buy into Farmington and planned on using various businesses as fronts for money laundering, drug trafficking, and prostitution. Aceveda received the memory card as a symbol of trust between him and Mackey and the two decided to investigate Pezuela, in hopes of shutting his operation down.

Later that evening, Aceveda met with Vic, who had walked out on a Department Review Board hearing and stolen a car full of blackmail material from one of Pezuela's couriers. Aceveda was shocked to learn the dirty secrets of many of the most influential people in Southern California, including public officials, mayoral aides, and the heads of special interest groups. Vic then asked him, "Is this enough to save my job?" Aceveda responded with a look of assent. Letting David take his own vehicle, Vic taunted Pezuela's courier and drove away, knowing that when the car's contents were returned to the right people, it would be more than enough to overturn the Review Board and keep him in charge of the Strike Team.

Other relationships

Mackey's training officer and first partner was Joe Clark, who taught him how to deal with violent street criminals and also how to bend the laws to his advantage. Clark was eventually dismissed from the force for beating a suspect. Clark's legacy to Vic was the justification that they always "did more good than bad." At the same time, Vic looked at Clark's life: a broken man, poor and devoid of family and friends, as his own possible future. He rededicated himself to support his friends and family in light of the crimes and trouble he had caused them. In Season Six, Mackey re-encountered Clark, who had become a for-hire enforcer who used his intimidation skills from his days as a cop to earn an income. Mackey participated in one raid, but like what he saw earlier, realized this type of occupation was both dangerous and unnecessarily cruel. This led Mackey to further self-contemplation.

Vic also hired a PI named Gordy Lieman to help locate his family during season two.

Mackey also had a close friendship with a prostitute, Connie Reisler, whom in an unseen story he found "lying in a bathroom in a pool of bloody crystals," trying to end her pregnancy with drain cleaner and a plunger. He told her if she ever needed any help she could call him, and they developed a deep bond. Connie was killed in Season Two while shacking up with a murderer in a criminal informant assignment. Since her death, Mackey occasionally checks in on her son, Brian, who is in foster care.

Vic has had a on-off sexual affair with Sergeant Danny Sofer, and is the illegitimate father of her son Lee. In Season 6, Vic's daughter Cassidy angrily confronts him after listening to her mother talking about the baby's paternity over the telephone.

Family life

Mackey was married for a little over 12 years to his wife, Corrine. However, problems between the two resulted in the marriage disintegrating. Though he had often cheated on his wife, he was devastated when she left him. He loves his three children very much and would do anything for them. At the end of Season 6, he refused to parade his autistic children in front of a department review board, despite the fact that Aceveda told him that it could save his job.

In season one, his son Matthew was diagnosed with autism. Later, his youngest daughter was diagnosed with autism as well. These family problems, and the necessary financial support, are the overriding factors as to why Mackey continues to pursue money illegally.

Crimes

The Crowley murder

Arguably, Mackey's worst crime was the murder of the fifth and then-newest member of his team, Detective Terry Crowley. Crowley had been sent by Captain David Aceveda and the Justice Department to build a Federal case against the Strike Team for colluding with drug lord Rondell Robinson. Vic was secretly warned of this by his friend, Assistant Chief Ben Gilroy.

Later, while Vic and Strike Team members Shane Vendrell and Crowley were raiding the home of a rival drug lord named "Two Time," the dealer stepped out of the bathroom with a pistol and was promptly gunned down by Vic and Shane. However, as Detective Crowley walked into the room, Vic picked up Two Time's gun, looked Terry right in the eye, and shot him in the head. Vic and Shane then rigged the crime scene evidence, claiming that "Two Time" stepped out of the bathroom, shot Terry, and was slain by their return fire. Captain Aceveda, however, was certain that Mackey was behind it and set out to prove his guilt, but he has never succeeded.

At the time, Shane was deeply troubled by the act, telling Vic,

"We killed a cop."

Vic calmly told him to,

"Get over it and don't bring it up again."

Mackey, however, would later express remorse, to his old partner, Joe Clark, who taught him how to break rules and get away with it. Mackey's acknowledgment was asking Clark if there was ever a time he felt he went too far.

In Season 5, Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh of internal affairs made it his personal mission to send Vic to prison for Terry's murder. He commandeered the Captain's office in "The Barn" and plastered it with grisly photographs of the Crowley murder scene. He even tried to force a confession from Vic by ordering him to revisit the crime scene and describe what happened in front of Terry's weeping brother. Vic, however, calmly stuck to his original story and Kavanaugh's crusade ultimately ended in the destruction of his own career.

In Season 6, after learning that Shane had murdered fellow Strike Team Detective Curtis Lemansky, Vic angrily defended his murder of Terry Crowley against Shane's comparison by saying,

"No, that's different! That son of a bitch, he was a traitor!"

Other crimes

Mackey and his team have committed several crimes like extortion, money laundering, smuggling, drug trafficking and obstruction of justice that would likely earn them long prison sentences.

Murder or accessory

• After a war between two rival dealers escalated out of hand, Mackey shut them in a shipping container overnight to work out their differences; in the morning, one had murdered the other.
• Mackey murdered Armenian Mafia enforcer Margos Dezerian, who had been ordered to find and murder those responsible for the Money Train Robbery. Dezerian had been getting closer to the Strike Team and had left a string of grisly murders in his wake, severing his victims' feet to indulge a fetish. Vic deliberately leaked the name of an informant to Margos, who broke into the informant's house in order to kill him. Instead he found only Vic. After Margos dropped his gun and surrendered, Vic shot him dead and rigged the crime scene to look like self defense.
• The team kidnapped, brutally tortured, and murdered Salvadoran drug lord Guardo Lima, who was falsely believed to be Lemansky's murderer, and then burned his body to destroy the evidence.
• Mackey struck a deal with Antwon Mitchell in order to secure the jail house safety of Lem, in which Vic, Ronnie, and Shane helped the One-Niners to break into a police warehouse. In the course of the crime, the criminals shot and killed the policeman guarding it. They also murdered Kern Little, whom Vic used to work with and was on somewhat friendly terms with. Vic allowed Kern to die rather than help him, and covered up both his murder and the murder of the guard, although Vic was clearly distressed by the ordeal.
• Vic also handed over the two Salvadoran gangsters who had carried out the San Marcos murders to a rival Mexican gang to be tortured and murdered. It should be noted this was done to stop the bloodshed and put an end to the gangland war in the aftermath of the San Marcos massacre.
• The team tied a Russian arms dealer to a chair wired with C-4 plastic explosives as a scare tactic for information about the murder of two Farmington cops. However, this caused the terrified dealer to panic and tip himself over, thereby detonating the explosives and blowing himself to smithereens.
• Mackey helped his friend and former Assistant Police Chief, Ben Gilroy, kidnap a gang member. This individual had witnessed Gilroy's hit and run killing of a fellow gangster while the two were dealing drugs late at night. Gilroy murdered the gang member (to Mackey's great surprise and anger) and then insisted that Vic help him dispose of the body. They dumped the body in a rival gang's territory in the hope it would be interpreted as a gang murder.
• Vic assisted CI and friend, Connie Reisler, in covering up a murder. Reisler, a prostitute, had murdered a john while under the influence of narcotics, believing that the john was about to harm her. Mackey told her to tell Homicide that the man assaulted her and she killed him in self defense. Mackey, under intense anguish, physically struck her in order to make her story appear authentic.

Assault/Torture

• Mackey beat and tortured a suspected pedophile with a phone book to find out where he was hiding the young girl whom he was planning to sell into slavery. Vic told the man,

  "Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I'm a different kind of cop."

  Aceveda, Claudette, and Dutch watched in silent disagreement, but Vic's methods were successful.
• Vic kidnapped a Russian Mafia boss to prevent him from firebombing a building full of Mexican immigrants.
• Turned a police attack dog loose on a rape suspect, allowing the dog to mutilate the man's genitals.
• Vic revealed the name of a criminal informant of then estranged partner, Shane Vendrell, to the Latino cigarette-smuggling boss he was informing on. Mackey wanted to exchange this information for the whereabouts of an arsonist and a Russian Mafia boss, both of whom were planning to firebomb a building full of illegal immigrants for financial gain (an additional benefit was the undermining of Shane's case and the exposure of his CI). The cigarette-smuggler at first refused to believe it, saying of the CI,

  "He's like a brother to me."

  To convince him, Mackey revealed a key piece of personal information only the informant would only have:

  "He said he popped your sister's cherry when she was only 14. Said it was so tight he thought it was her asshole. Said he told you he was helping her with history homework... You do whatever you feel is appropriate with that information. I'll see it doesn't blow back on you."

  The CI was never heard from again.
• Mackey physically attacked Mexican drug lord and serial rapist Armadillo Quintero, beating him up with a heavy Law book and severely burning his face on a stove. Vic was enraged that Armadillo had brutally raped a 12-year old girl and ordered a rival druglord and personal friend of Vic's to be burned alive.
• After kidnapping a supsect off the street, Mackey stacked tires around a his body and threatened to light him on fire if not paid $350,000 plus an additional $50,000 for, "ruining my day." It must be noted that these crimes transpired on Mexican soil and the offense would have to be adjudicated by the Mexican law enforcement system.
• To get a confession, he nearly drowned a man in a barrel of used motor oil.
• He threatened to throw a man out a window after forcing him to write a crudely misspelled suicide note.
• Mackey drove a suspect into an enemy gang territory and rolled down his window, telling an enemy gang member that the suspect made sexual comments about his sister, and waited for the car to be surrounded by enemy gang members before telling the suspect that he better tell him what he wants to know or he would, "have to find another ride home".
• A teenager was handcuffed to a metal pole and shocking him with the suspect's own stun gun.
• Mackey used the pointed edge of a murdered police officer's badge to repeatedly stab and torture one of that cop's killers. He did so to extract information on the suspect's partners about the multiple murders of uniformed police officers and then simply to punish the suspect for being part of the crime.
• Mackey assaulted the owner of a pawnshop at knife point to learn about the location of two kilos of cocaine which he and the Strike Team stole (and later lost) during a raid on Armenian drug dealers. Earlier in the day, Mackey and his partner, Shane Vendrell, entered the home of a car thief and assaulted him in pursuit of the same information.

Theft

• Mackey and his team hijacked a police evidence van to steal a key piece of evidence (a gun) used in the hijacking of commercial trucks. The Strike Team used this evidence to prove the innocence of an accused man and then to frame three gang members who were actually guilty of the original crime.
• The Team has embezzled tens of thousands of dollars from seizures, arrests, or other police-related activities.
• Robbing a money laundering operation run by the Armenian Mafia, during which several people were killed (although not by the Strike Team). The money stolen was later revealed to be traceable evidence planted by the US Treasury Department.

Blackmail

• Julien Lowe was blackmailed to get him to recant his allegations against the Strike Team.
• Mackey threatened to plant crack cocaine on a teenager unless he told who he saw ambush and kill two Farmington cops.
• Vic attempted to blackmail City Councilman David Aceveda with photos of his rape.

Covering evidence

• The team functioned as a go-between in allowing drugs to flow through Farmington.

Internal Affairs

During the Fifth Season, Vic attempted to throw Internal Affairs Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh from his game by sleeping with Kavanaugh's ex-wife and lewdly informing him of the details. In response, Kavanaugh's pursuit of Mackey became a very personal affair, leading him to begin breaking the law himself in order to win their private war. After attempting to sexually assault Corrine Mackey and building an alliance with imprisoned drug lord Antwon Mitchell, Kavanaugh fabricated evidence, implicating Vic in the murder of Detective Curtis "Lem" Lemansky. When Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach and Claudette Wyms exposed his actions, Kavanaugh was stripped of his badge and imprisoned. Soon after, Vic visited Kavanaugh in prison and gloated over his victory, but the disgraced Lieutenant remained unfazed. "One day," he told Vic, "the Universe will take out its trash."

Personal information

• Mackey appears to favor a Smith & Wesson Model 4506-1 pistol in .45 ACP and carries a snub-nosed revolver as a backup gun.
• Mackey wears a Cartier SA Must 21 Chronograph wristwatch.
• Mackey's sunglasses are Polo Sport 1048 H4A (silver frames), though The Shield newsletter states the 1071s are a close match as well.