Since Vic's still raw over Tio's passing, the gruesome beating of Armadillo, and the fact that Claudette won't lay off of his connection to Tio, he decides to take the day off and leave his Strike Team in David's care. While they're off busting male hookers working outside David's campaign headquarters, Vic and his old partner, Joe, check in on an old enemy - Fleetwood. Joe still holds a grudge against the man that had him kicked off the force. Now it's time for payback. He knows Fleetwood's still scheming, so he gets Vic to back him up on a bust that ends up going horribly awry. Meanwhile, Danny discovers that Julien didn't back up her version of the shooting at the Al-Thanis' and now may be pulling desk duty for the rest of her career unless things are cleared up. In the midst of all this chaos, a young man enters the barn with a severed arm and drops it on Dutch's desk. Once he discovers that the arm belongs to a woman who's still alive, he and Claudette find themselves running against the clock to find her before she dies.
The Shield breaks the conventional formula of the cop genre. It plays out in a tough, morally ambiguous world in which the line between good and bad is crossed ever day. The series focuses on the tension between a group of corrupt but effective cops and a captain torn between bringing them down and advancing his own political ambitions.
The Shield stars rogue cop "Det. Vic Mackey", leader of the elite Strike Team unit, who is effective at eliminating crime but who operates under his own set of rules. "Captain David Aceveda", the young precinct head who doesn't like Mackey's tactics and wants to bust him off the force. And "Det. Claudette Wyms", a veteran detective who understands Mackey and knows how to play both sides of the fence.