Victor Samuel Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the FX crime drama series The Shield, which ran for seven seasons. Mackey is portrayed as a corrupt and brutal detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. He leads a small anti-gang unit primarily tasked with curbing the rampant drug trade in the fictional Farmington district of Los Angeles. He commits several crimes throughout the series including drug dealing, extortion, police brutality, and murder. He is often depicted justifying his crimes as a means to an end. Despite his actions, Mackey considers himself a devoted father and family man. Concept, creation and casting As part of his research for The Shield, Shawn Ryan, the creator, rode with police officers in San Francisco. Ryan always returned with what the Los Angeles Times describe as "dark, twisted tales". These experiences, combined with the then-recent Rampart scandal, became the impetus for Vic Mackey. Ryan has said "The interesting question to me was: 'What do we allow our officers to do to make us safer? How many rights of criminals are we willing to give up to ensure our safety?'" Shawn Ryan outlined his initial conception of Vic Mackey and how it ultimately evolved into the character portrayed on the show. He states "I had not envisioned Vic Mackey looking like [Michael Chiklis]. I'm sort of a big guy with a bald head and people always asked if I intentionally cast someone who looked like me, and absolutely not. I always described it as a young Harrison Ford role and Michael came in and made me reimagine it. He was this bulldog with this intensity and energy that matched. He saw and read the character differently and better than anyone who came in before or after him... In his audition for us, he was on his feet and pacing around like a caged tiger. Even then, as great as the performance was, I still kind of nervous... I still had some butterflies. It wasn't until we got in front of the cameras, where I was like, 'I really do think the world will see what I did.'" Ryan said the writers always thought of Mackey as being like a shark, someone who, in order to survive, has to keep moving forward. Ryan has said FX initially "wanted Eric Stoltz to play Vic Mackey" and that they made him an