Chicago PD’s Most Mishandled Cop May Be Season 13’s Secret Weapon

Not all characters on Chicago PD have gotten as much screentime as others, but one has been particularly mishandled in a way the series has an immediate chance to fix. Voight, Ruzek, and Burgess have definitely received the most focus of anyone in the Chicago PD cast as of late, with others only occasionally getting to headline their own episode.

Kevin Atwater Has Been Chicago PD’s Most Mishandled Character For Years
He Largely Only Features In Gang-Related Storylines

There are a couple of things keeping Chicago PD from truly becoming one of the best cop shows on TV right now, and one of them is that the Intelligence Unit’s undercover operations don’t really make sense anymore. In particular, it seems impossible for Kevin Atwater to ever go unrecognized after how often he’s been used to infiltrate street gangs.

In fairness, this isn’t necessarily a race problem, although that is a reasonable criticism. They can’t exactly send in Kim to kick it around with Mello Buckzz and the NLMB. But it does feel like it limits Atwater’s character. And even Atwater’s past storylines involving his father or his recent romance with forensic therapist Val have been problematic.

Professional ethics are more of a suggestion than a rule in the world of network TV, so the fact that he shouldn’t technically see Val even after getting a new therapist warrants a mild pass. But Chicago PD season 10’s major Atwater episode shows that Atwater actually doesn’t work particularly well as an undercover officer, and season 12 underscores why.

Atwater’s Work With The Urban Vision Community Center Could Have Been His Best Season 12 Story
His Community Initiative Episode Was Left On A Cliffhanger

Season 12, episode 17 does a lot to build Atwater’s relationship with Val and generally feels like his biggest storyline of the season, but Kevin’s most compelling arc in Chicago PD season 12 should have been his community initiative work with his friend Hype. Unfortunately, the plotline of “Street Jesus” doesn’t do much with Atwater that we haven’t seen before.

Hype and Kevin are in the middle of promoting the Urban Vision Community Center when everything’s up-ended by a local drug war, which ultimately leads to Atwater going undercover. When Atwater’s found out, Voight makes the senseless decision to send Hype in with a wire to spy on a suspect who’d literally just demonstrated his ability to sniff out cops.

This predictably leads to Hype’s death, leaving the at-risk youth center’s plotline on something of a cliffhanger, since Hype was the most influential voice for change in his neighborhood. Voight agrees to keep Hype’s CPD cooperation a secret in order to maintain his legacy, but whether that legacy ultimately amounted to anything is a mystery season 13 needs to answer.

Reid’s Death Can Lead To Atwater Playing A More Prominent Role In Chicago PD Season 13
One Of Voight’s Team Helping The Community Is A Wise PR Move

Toya Turner’s Kiana Cook leaving Chicago PD means her unresolved familial tensions will never be revisited, but the community center’s open-ended fate presents a golden opportunity for LaRoyce Hawkins’ Kevin Atwater. With Hype laid to rest, Kevin is the next best person to continue promoting Urban Vision’s mission statement to serve at-risk youths in a particularly gang-ridden part of Chicago.

Even the fact that Hype’s association with toppling a murderous drug dealer would have soiled his reputation illustrates the need for community initiative. And after Reid’s death in Chicago PD season 12, Voight could use the positive press from his officer’s outreach work to stack the jury in his favor if Chapman holds him accountable for the deputy chief’s murder.

This would result in Kevin playing a significant role in Chicago PD season 13’s biggest overarching plotline. Voir dire would weed out any jurors with strong opinions about cops, but Chapman can’t do much to prevent at least a few jurors making it through who associate the CPD with Urban Vision. And that could ironically become Atwater’s biggest season-long conflict.

Atwater’s Community Initiative Work Can Put Reid’s Last Words To Voight Into New Perspective
Kevin Could Reveal What Voight And Reid Truly Have In Common

Without revisiting Urban Vision, Atwater’s Chicago PD romance with Val is currently his only major storyline. But since the community center was still raising funds for construction when Marcus “Hype” Daniels was gunned down, there’s a lot of remaining work ahead. And if Atwater were to get involved at Voight’s suggestion, it could set up later tensions between the two.

Reid’s last words before dying were that Voight’s even worse than him, and capitalizing on the press from Atwater’s work with Urban Vision would prove it. Tying the unit to community outreach for the sake of good PR would exploit at-risk individuals in a very Reid-like way, the difference being that Reid’s exploitation didn’t typically interfere with otherwise noble causes.

Atwater already has reasons to be mad at Voight anyway. Hank chastised Kevin for not dropping Hype’s name with CPD sooner, but there’s no clear reason to believe that wouldn’t have still gotten him killed. If Chicago PD were to fully explore Voight’s exploitative tendencies through Urban Vision, Atwater has the most vested interest in taking the sergeant to task.