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Vic Mackey has committed many crimes during his tenure as a police officer.

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,

"Lem and Ronny failed to clear the room, and Two-Time shot Terry. 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.
  • 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.

  • 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.
  • Mackey purposely released Kern after he was arrested from an arms buying bust, claiming he was a CI who tipped him off about the deal. Later that night, Kern and some of his thugs wound up murdering a Byz Lat and nearly killed Diagur Leyva in a drive-by shooting, even though Vic clearly told him not to.
  • 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.
  • Vic and Ronnie kidnapped Armenian hitman Ari Zadofian and forced him not to kill any member of Shane or Vic's family. In order to be 100% safe from him, Vic told Ronnie to kill Zadofian, which he did.
  • Vic, along with Ronnie and Shane, manufactured a fictitious gang war between the Armenian mob led by Ellis Rezian and the Mexican cartel led by Guillermo Beltran and Cruz Pezuela. Mackey set up the execution of Rezian along with some of his top lieutenants in order to remove any knowledge about his past criminal activity and avoid further transgressions by the Armenians against his family.

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.
  • 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 drug lord 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.
  • Vic shoved a suspect's head into a fish tank housing a snake. The man was bit in the face as a result.

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.

Miscellaneous[]

  • In The Shield: The Game, Vic is able to commit approximately 109 crimes, with the option of having them be interrogations, murders, framing or brutality centered around getting confessions.
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