'Chicago P.D.' Season 7 Episode 8: Fans are upset with how the racially charged story ended this week
In this week's episode of 'Chicago P.D.', Halstead comes across a house where two young boys have been murdered and he is determined to bring the killer to justice. When the Interim Superintendent Jason Crawford asks the Intelligence Unit to use a new facial recognition software that he testifies, works, the software gives them a name based on a grainy image.
Marcus West is soon caught by the police and brought in. Halstead books him into country jail hoping a night there would coax West into confessing. However, West is attacked brutally and is put in a medically induced coma. Later on in the episode, West succumbs to his injuries, but by then it is revealed that West is, in fact, innocent as he repeatedly claimed and that the facial recognition software made a mistake, despite claiming more than 99% accuracy.
Both Hank Voight and Crawford know that the blowback from this mistake would be severe, and to save Halstead, Voight slips the name of the real killer to the gang leader who has him beaten to death. As the episode closes, Crawford is announcing to the press that the killer has been caught, but rather than admit the software's or the police department's mistake, Marcus West is framed.
Fans were really upset with this ending -- though it brought out the reality of the implicit bias that facial recognition software has against dark-skinned people, specifically black people.
One fan tweeted, "Great episode of #ChicagoPD but them not disclosing the facial recognition software had a greater chance for false positives for blacks had me so heated!! Then at the end of the episode, Voight says to Jay "let it be" even tho an innocent black man died bc of it. SO NOT FAIR!"
Fans feel that the show should not have tried to normalize such events, but rather shown what the police should have really done. A viewer wrote, "Yes. I wish for once when they did a #BlackLivesMatter centric episode they did the right thing instead of just doing what happens in reality. The narrative needs to be changed. Let's stop normalizing injustice and corruption."
One thing that is clear is that fans hated the ending and the framing of an innocent black man just to save face for the police department. One viewer tweeted, "Ok as a POC I'm kinda put-out w/ this ep of #ChicagoPD. This just told the public it's fine to say a black guy did it whether he did it or not and just let him do the time or rather get killed in jail. Just as long as the white cops come out clean."
'Chicago P.D.' airs on NBC on Wednesday nights.