Chicago PD season 7, episode 17 recap: Before The Fall
By Kari Highman
Chicago PD had the Intelligence Unit tangle with Homicide in Before The Fall. Find out what happened in our Chicago PD season 7, episode 17 recap.
The latest episode of Chicago PD pitted the Intelligence Unit against the Homicide Division while a gang war ignited over multiple shootings.
In “Before The Fall,” Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) made it his personal mission to find out who shot innocent children in the streets of Chicago. Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) once again went undercover to assist in the investigation, but yet again, his undercover gig took an unexpected and unwelcome turn.
Click through this slideshow to find out what happened in the latest Chicago PD episode for each of your favorite characters. Let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments at the end of this article.
Shots fired
“Before The Fall” started off with sirens blaring and Voight’s arrival on a murder scene. He heard shouting nearby, and saw a young girl with a bullet wound in her chest; Voight applied pressure on the wound while the girl tried to hang on. She was taken off in an ambulance, and shortly thereafter reinforcements arrived.
Voight first talked to Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) to lay out a plan for their investigation. But then he met Paul Staples from Homicide, who told him that he “would take it from here.” Voight, with his signature trademark snark, told the detective to “Get off my scene.”
When Staples accosted him, Voight gave him a glare and asked him if he was out of his mind. He’d almost have to be to go toe-to-toe with Hank Voight. Voight told Staples how he’d been holding the girl—Willa James—in his arms as she bled, and he wasn’t going to relinquish the case.
The West Side Jokers were their number one suspect, as Brooks Campbell (the murder victim) was a major player in the drug game. But there was another wrinkle: Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) and Vanessa Rojas (Lisseth Chavez) caught Lamar Garrison on camera, proving that Lamar had lied to Ruzek when he said that he didn’t see anything. Yeah, Intelligence doesn’t take well to liars.
Voight went to talk to Lamar, who actually agreed to speak. Too bad he kept up with his lies, and insisted that he did not see anything. When Voight left Lamar’s, he spotted a church van driven by his old acquaintance Frank Rochester (Steve Harris from The Practice). Voight had previously put Frank in prison, which Frank credited with turning his life around.
So our hero paid him a visit asked Frank if he knew Lamar. He knew him well, and said that Lamar not cooperating was “not the first time that’s happened.”
“We’re staring down a full-on gang war,” Voight explained, trying to get across the seriousness of the situation. He wanted Frank to help him get the name of the shooter, off the record, of course. Especially when he received a phone call that Willa had died from her wounds, making this now a double homicide.
Frank agreed to approach Lamar himself, meaning it was time for a good old-fashioned Chicago PD stakeout. Upton pulled up in a minivan with Ruzek and Atwater in the back seat, and told them to “Stay warm, kittens.” Cue Adam’s genuine confusion to Kevin: “Did she just call us kittens?” Yep, she certainly did.
Lamar and Frank were having a discussion about the shooting, in which Frank warned Lamar that if he didn’t handle his business now, he wouldn’t be able to. He assured Lamar that if he gave up a name, and Frank passed it to the police, that would take the heat off of him. Lamar finally revealed the identity of the shooter: JoJo McGuinness. But was he telling the truth?