Chicago PD season 6 episode 8 review: Atwater’s choice

Chicago PD season 5 episode 4

Chicago PD season 6 episode 8 found Kevin Atwater in a difficult spot on Wednesday night — was he going to put his attention and focus into his job, or into his community?

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The real debate for Atwater started when he grew closer to Laila, a woman who was helping out on a case to take down a local drug ring (basically, similar stuff that we’ve seen most of the season). Kenny was a guy who was running a lot of stuff and causing trouble, and the two had themselves quite the history. Laila used to be down to do some bad things, but it was a long time around and since then, she’s found a way to effectively turn her life around. She even spends her time helping out some other troubled people over at a local youth center.

Kevin admired Laila and the passion that she brought to what she was doing, and he also appreciated the help she offered when he posed as her boyfriend at a kid’s birthday party — something that was essential for getting some key intel on this case. Yet, everything started to fall apart a little bit after the two slept together and Kevin learned that she had her fingerprints on a gun that was used in a murder a good ten years ago. Her involvement in what happened back then complicated everything, and it also made Atwater reconsider everything he’d been doing.

Yet, here was the dilemma: What was the point of punishing someone for a mistake they made a long time ago when they’d already found a way to atone … and were helping some other people in the process? He didn’t want to turn on her but in the end, Voight had him put off the case once he realized how close the two were. Laila, in turn, was used in order to bring down Kenny’s operation. There was a plea deal that would help her avoid a substantial period of time in prison.

Well, there was another problem here that surfaced in that Kenny was already dead at the time in which she found him. That meant that her plea deal wasn’t going to be what it was since somebody had to pay for what happened. She ended up going to prison for at least three, and all of a sudden Atwater’s decision to not side with her had some deeper consequences than he first thought that it would. Not, she’s not going to have much of a future at all.

What this did inform

At the end of the episode tonight, we did see some super-important stuff as it just so turned out that Kevin didn’t want to have someone else in the community go down for taking down Kenny, especially since he knew he was a bad guy and nobody should suffer for that. This is why he’s the one who took the murder weapon away and dumped it in the water in the closing minutes. Sometimes, investigations don’t need conclusions, and in his mind, he wasn’t about to let someone else go away who he didn’t think was a bad person.

CarterMatt Verdict

Chicago PD season 6 episode 8 provided tonight a really great story all about rights and wrongs. There are difficult choices and gray areas that exist all over the world, and it’s the result of police officers to enforce what they feel needs enforcing under the letter of the law. Tonight, LaRoyce Hawkins’ character proved that sometimes the letter deviates from the spirit. We just gotta wait and see if there are some larger consequences for this down the road.

What did you think about Chicago PD season 6 episode 8 overall? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments below! (Photo: NBC.)

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