Chicago PD reinstates fan favorite character (after breaking a few rules)

Chicago PD has seen brighter days. The members of the IU team are struggling, and to make matters worse, there's less of them than usual. Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) has been forced to navigate cases with Dante Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) and Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) MIA.

Fortunately, the team regained a member during the season 11 episode "Retread." It was not the easiest process, and Voight and company definitely had to break some rules to get it done, but the episode ended with Ruzek picking his badge back up.

The following contains spoilers for Chicago PD 1102

The rule-breaking started early in "Retread." Ruzek was frustrated by the fact that he couldn't pass the power test necessary to be reinstated, so he decided to pick gambling back up in order to get the rush that he previously got on the job. He's had issues with gambling in the past, but he decided to go against his better judgement, and wound up involved in a double homicide.

It wasn't the fact that Ruzek was gambling that placed in potentially hot water, though. The off duty officer was using one of his undercover aliases to gamble, which is illegal without permission, and he also consulted with a criminal informant off the record, in order to find the location of a poker game.

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It gets worse. When two masked men break in and rob the game, Ruzek fires at them with a gun that's unmarked and intended for undercover use only. His career could have been over if any of this been found, but Voight agrees to keep Ruzek's flagrant mistakes under wraps.

Ruzek's gambling was covered up by IU

Voight told Ruzek to act like he was never at the poker game, and he agrees to take over the case so that he can hide Ruzek's involvement. He told Ruzek to stay out of the investigation, but the latter did not follow orders, and decided to launch an investigation of his own.

A series of very close calls result in the case being solved, and Voight, along with the rest of the IU, manages to keep Ruzek's cover under wraps. It's a miracle he didn't get caught, but perhaps even more surprising is the fact that the character manages to pass his power test at the end of the episode!

"Retread" ends with Ruzek being reinstated as a police officer. The big question, of course, is whether the character will continue to put his career at risk by gambling or if he learned his lesson from what happened during the deadly poker game.