LaRoyce Hawkins is leaving Chicago P.D. after 13 seasons as one of its last original cast members

LaRoyce Hawkins, who has played Officer Kevin Atwater on Chicago P.D. since the pilot back in 2014, is walking out of Intelligence. Deadline broke the news on July 2 that Hawkins is leaving after 13 seasons. He is not just vanishing between episodes, though. He will play out the first stretch of Season 14 so Atwater gets a real goodbye, and then the character is written off. NBC declined to comment.

Thirteen seasons is a long time to carry a badge, and Hawkins has been there since the very first episode, back when Chicago P.D. was the new spinoff nobody was sure would stick. He watched half the original cast rotate out around him and kept showing up. Now he is the one leaving.

The part where the show already posted a "help wanted" sign

Here is the detail doing numbers online. According to Deadline, producers are already casting Atwater's replacement, and the character breakdown asks for "a new series regular, a Black cop who is an agent of chaos."

An agent of chaos. On a show about the Intelligence Unit. You cannot make the fan comments up, and they are having a field day with a police procedural openly recruiting a wildcard the week one of its steadiest hands packs up his desk.

How Atwater might actually get out of Chicago

If you have been keeping up, Season 13 handed the writers an easy exit ramp. Atwater reconnected with Officer Tasha Fox, an old flame from his academy days, who then moved to Miami. She came back to tell him she was pregnant, and the two were last seen figuring out how to raise a kid across two cities (CBR, HELLO!).

So the smart money says Atwater rides off to Florida to be a dad, which would be about the softest landing this show has ever given anyone. This is a series where people usually leave in handcuffs, in a body bag, or in the middle of an internal affairs investigation. A happy ending with a baby would be practically scandalous.

He is one of the last ones standing

Hawkins's exit is the latest in a long run of Chicago P.D. cast turnover. Jesse Lee Soffer and Tracy Spiridakos both left in recent years, though the two turned up again for a One Chicago crossover in 2026. Toya Turner exited ahead of Season 13 after a single season as Officer Kiana Cook, and Arienne Mandi came aboard that year as Officer Eva Imani (HELLO!).

Beyond the One Chicago universe, where he has popped up across all three shows, Hawkins has had roles in Marvel's Ironheart, Power Book IV: Force, and Ballers (CBR). So he is not exactly short on places to go.

Chicago P.D. returns for Season 14 later this year, Atwater's last few episodes included. Then the agent of chaos moves in.