The Shield Producer Says The Series Changed Its Name After LAPD Threatened To Sue FX

Shawn Ryan’s “The Shield” reportedly upset real-life law enforcement before its first episode even aired. The series, about a group of corrupt cops in Los Angeles — which is considered one of the best TV crime dramas of all time — almost faced legal action by the city’s actual police department, according to one of the show’s producers. What caused the uproar?

“The Shield” was originally called “Rampart,” named after the corruption scandal that engulfed the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums task force in the ’90s. However, it seems that the LAPD didn’t want to be associated with a prestige TV series that painted their cops in a negative light. “LAPD s*** itself,” executive producer Glen Mazzara wrote in a now-deleted X thread (via Decider). He wrote that the department threatened legal action “if we ever mentioned that our show was based on the LAPD.”

While it might be easy to assume that Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chiklis) and his corrupt comrades are LAPD officers, the series never mentions the department by name. What’s more, the creators of the show (which made our list of FX’s greatest series) had to work within certain confines to distance its fictional cops from their real-life counterparts.

Recalling the history of “The Shield” in the aforementioned X posts, Glen Mazzara noted that the LAPD told FOX that the institution’s name and iconography were trademarked.

“LAPD has trademarked their badges, too, so we had to create something that looked very different,” he added. “In fact, FOX was so terrified of upsetting LAPD when we started shooting, they made us have our characters wear their badges on the wrong side of the uniform.”

Despite the efforts to distance itself from the real LAPD, it seems that people understood that the series was inspired by the organization’s scandals. Mazzara noted that “The Shield” faced criticism for depicting cops in a negative light, but the creators felt it was important to show the darker side of police work, as it reflected reality at the time.