Remember when Chicago P.D. guest star Jefferson White told TVLine that Sean and Upton were kindred spirits? This week’s episode tapped into that as the Intelligence detective closed in on Sean’s sex trafficking operation.
Upton was pretty sure that Sean was tracking underage girls and followed his every move to prove it. She tracked him to various meetings and even waited outside of his apartment, snapping photos while remaining out of sight. Since Sean was the son of Police Chief Patrick O’Neal, Intelligence needed to work incognito. That meant using dummy sign-on numbers and doing whatever they could to keep the chief out of it.
The team zeroed in on a man named Victor, who they believed was key to taking down Sean. While undercover, Ruzek pulled the plug early when Birdy, the underage girl Victor pushed on him as a test, got too close. This led to Upton shooting and killing Victor, dealing a huge blow to their case. Even worse, Birdy (who turned out to be 18 years old) refused to talk, and they had to let her go since she technically did nothing illegal. This set Upton off, and Voight pulled her outside for a quick chat.
“You want to save something too badly right now,” he told Upton, who admitted he was right.
Instead of taking his advice to go home and rest, Upton showed up at Sean’s place. Pretending to bond with him, she opened up about missing Halstead, who left to run his own unit in Bolivia. “Can’t get a hold of him. Can’t go home, either,” she said. (Who else thinks she wasn’t acting undercover here?) Her plan to get close to Sean worked, and Intelligence soon accessed his burner phone, uncovering a potential meeting place in the process.
Voight brought their case to the same attorney who was hesitant to sign off on a warrant for Escano, convincing her to help them with their investigation. The team moved in on Sean’s secret base of operations, only to realize that he had been tipped off and scrubbed everything. But who could have known?
Chief O’Neal caught onto them, picking up on Victor’s shooting and the fake numbers. However, he thought Intelligence was looking into Sean for drugs, and that his son had relapsed again. When Voight broke the news that Sean was being investigated for trafficking underage girls, the chief was left in disbelief.
Elsewhere, as Sean walked to his front door, he saw Upton in her car watching him. Their brief eye contact felt like a silent warning: “I’m never going to stop until you’re behind bars.”
What did you think of this week’s Chicago P.D.?