The Shield: Season 5 (2006)

A race war breaks out between blacks and Mexicans. Plus, a tax-increase ballot initiative fails, meaning cutbacks. One victim (in four months) is Vic, who also has the new IAD investigator (Forest Whitaker) out to get him. "When he jumps dirty, we'll know," investigator Kavanaugh tells Aceveda. The reason: a plant inside the Strike Team.

While the Strike Team goes after a thug named Doomsday, who is suspected of a triple murder, Kavanaugh is squeezing Lem to implicate Vic in the Terry Crowley killing. Meanwhile, Dutch and Claudette suspect a minister with a wandering eye of attempting to kill the alcoholic husband of a parishioner he has his eye on; and Julien has serious doubts about whether the rookie Tina will make the grade.

Vic finally meets Kavanaugh, but first the Strike Team begins to develop a strategy to counter the IAD probe. Meanwhile, Tina goes undercover to nab a sex-trafficking ring; and friction between Claudette and Dutch deepens when she sides with defense lawyer Becca Doyle (Laura Harring) in a high-school shooting case the two detectives had worked on.

Vic asks lawyer Becca Doyle to represent him -- and the rest of the Strike Team -- in the Kavanaugh investigation. "We're family," he tells her. Vic also comes to doubt the loyalty of Emolia (Onahoua Rodriguez) and questions her about it. Meanwhile, Corinne confronts Kavanaugh about who he is and what he's doing; Tina makes yet another rookie mistake; and Dutch grows increasingly concerned about Claudette's health as the two probe a grisly case involving a dead pregnant woman.

Illegal prescription drugs are killing people in Farmington, and the Strike Team probes the case in a way that draws in Kavanaugh, who's following the goings-on via a bug in the Team's clubhouse. Kavanaugh also learns that Vic knows about Lem's wire. Meanwhile, Becca Doyle fills Vic in on the background of the IAD probe. Dutch and Claudette investigate the case of a young illegal alien who jumped out of a moving car.

Kavanaugh sets up operations at the Barn---in Billings' office. On the street, the Strike Team is preoccupied with gang violence involving a white drug dealer. Meanwhile, a bloody shirt reopens a cold case for Claudette and Dutch, and Tina learns something about Julien that he certainly doesn't want her to know. Michael Chiklis directed.

While an ever weakening Claudette continues to interrogate murder suspect Kleavon Gardner (Ray Campbell), the Strike Team joins forces with a citywide task-force chief to probe the murder of a meth dealer's girlfriend and her 2-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, Vic tells Becca about the $65,000 he gave Corinne; Kavanaugh questions Gardocki; and Aceveda offers Lem a deal. Fox football analyst Jimmy Johnson has a cameo as a prisoner.

Vic enlists Emolia -- with Kavanaugh's grudging assent -- to infiltrate a Salvadoran gang that has grenades in its arsenal. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh tries to enlist the imprisoned Antwon Mitchell (Anthony Anderson) to rat out Vic. And Dutch offers information about Vic to Kavanaugh, who also has a criminal matter involving his ex-wife (Gina Torres) to worry about. Dutch is involved with that, too.

Lem's in jail, and the Strike Team can't bail him out because Kavanaugh has had their assets (and Corinne's) frozen. Kavanaugh also engineers a confrontation between Vic and Terry Crowley's brother. Elsewhere, Aceveda confronts Kavanaugh; Claudette, who's back at work, investigates the murder of a man whose body was found in a Dumpster; and Tina makes yet another mistake.