Spoilers ahead for Episode 17 of Chicago P.D. Season 7, called "Before the Fall," and the promo for Episode 18.
Chicago P.D. returned to NBC after a brief break with an episode that brought out the best and the worst in Hank Voight, and that worst may be ruining Rojas as a police officer. In "Before the Fall," Voight was taking the case personally right off the bat after finding a dying little girl, and bringing an old friend/CI into the mix just raised the stakes. After his CI was brutally beaten due to a homicide cop's actions, Voight went ahead and decked the cop in the face with all of Intelligence looking on, none of whom looked too bothered or sympathetic. So what does this have to do with Rojas?
Well, in the promo footage for next week's episode, called "Lines," Rojas crosses some lines that she might not have crossed back before she joined the unit packed with cops willing to break the rules. Take a look:
In "Lines," Intelligence will be on the trail of the leader of a drug ring, and the footage makes it clear that they need the surveillance video to make the case. Unfortunately, Rojas' ex-boyfriend she's known since she was a kid will evidently wind up in the mix, and Rojas will delete the footage to cover for him. Upton isn't happy to hear what Rojas did, since deleting the footage is obstruction and Rojas could go to jail.
On the one hand, it's a bit rich of Upton to freak out on anybody else for crossing lines to get things done after what she did to Darius Walker, but I would argue that Upton was smart and calculated in what she did. Rojas seemed to make her move in the heat of the moment when put on the spot.
On the other hand, the bigger question might be: would Rojas have done something like this if not for her months of watching the Intelligence cops more or less getting their way through whatever means necessary, shortly after watching Voight punch a man he outranks to the floor, with none of the other Intelligence officers saying a word or objecting?
Sure, they didn't all look thrilled about it, but it struck me as a case of "Voight will be Voight," and that can't be good for Rojas' growth as a cop. She wasn't part of a unit before Intelligence, after all, and faced a hard transition. Voight did tell Upton earlier in Season 7 that he liked shaping young cops rather than bringing in existing detectives like Halstead and Upton herself.
Speaking of Upton, Rojas has seen her friend and roommate cross lines as well, even though she presumably doesn't know that Upton arranged for Darius Walker to be killed. When Halstead was missing, Upton was open that it wasn't business as usual because somebody she cared about was in danger, and Rojas even got Upton to admit she loves Halstead.
Now that somebody Rojas cares about and likely loves (as seen in the promo) is danger, could she think back on what Upton did for Halstead and think breaking the law is just something that Intelligence can get away with when things get personal? Admittedly, Upton was more or less just more ruthless than usual when trying to find Halstead, and Rojas' action could have a much larger impact.
When Upton later arranged for a bad guy to die a bad death, nobody on Chicago P.D. really cared that Walker was gone other than Voight, and that was only because he was concerned about Upton. Rojas seemingly deleted footage when Intelligence needs all the footage they can get to get a bad guy convicted. This does not seem like good timing at all.
If nothing changes and Rojas gets away with what she did, then she's well on her way to becoming a great Intelligence cop under Voight, but potentially a cop whose chances of a career on the up-and-up were ruined. Find out when the Chicago P.D. episode "Lines" airs Wednesday, March 25 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.
Chicago P.D. isn't expected to run for as long as usual in Season 7 due to the coronavirus, but at least fans can count on the stories of Intelligence continuing for several more seasons.
