While on vacation, Chief of Detectives Robert Ironside of the San Francisco police force is shot by an unknown assailant and paralyzed from the waist down. Fearing he will be forced to retire he convinces the powers that be to to make him a Special Consultant to the Commisioner of Police, who is an old friend. With his team, consisting of police detective Ed Brown, police woman Eve Whitfield, and reformed Juvenile offender Mark Sanger. he tries to find the gunman who put him in a wheelchair.