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Official Site: FX Network

Detective Victor Samuel "Vic" Mackey, portrayed by Michael Chiklis, was the antihero and main protagonist of the FX crime drama series The Shield. Mackey was a corrupt and brutal Detective in the Los Angeles Police Department; he stole from drug dealers, routinely beat suspects and committed murder on at least three occasions. While two of the victims were violent gangsters, one was a member of his own team who was secretly working to expose Vic and his unit. Mackey saw his tactics as a means to an end. He is a devoted father and also saw himself as a family man.

Little is known about Mackey's early life, although he once mentioned that his father was a bricklayer (possibly only because he was making a joke). In Season Five, he told Lt. Jon Kavanaugh that he had been a police officer for at least 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, which would imply that Mackey is a native of the Boston, Massachusetts area. In support of this theory, during the Season One episode "Cherrypoppers", Vic approaches a suspect outside of an underage sex show and, as a ruse, asks if the man remembers him from Boston.

Vic Mackey's morality is a classic example of selfish consequentialism. Mackey feels that his actions are justified if they produce the best consequences for himself and those close to him. While he had a solid status as a family man, he committed adultery with several women, including his fellow officer Danielle "Danny" Sofer. Mackey's personality is often viewed as amoral or machiavellian, believing that the ends justify the means. However, this ultimately led to his downfall, which he narrowly avoided until the very end of the series.

His brutality is usually directed towards criminals whom he considered deserving of their harsh treatment at his hands-i.e. rapists, drug dealers, pedophile and mass murderers. Even when he has broken these laws himself, he has often justified it to himself by doing so in order to solve what he regards as more serious crimes. For example, in the First Season finale, Vic cornered a teenaged murder witness and threatened to plant crack cocaine on him unless he violated the neighborhood code of silence and revealed who murdered two police officers, proving that he would also hurt the innocent when it suited his needs.

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