Chicago Crossover (Season 16, Episode 7)
Premise: Chicago P.D.’s Voight, Lindsay and Halstead team up with SVU to stop a ring streaming child abuse online, a case tied to Lindsay’s runaway half brother.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 7
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish)
- Guest stars
- Lou Taylor Pucci as Teddy Courtney, Jason Beghe as Hank Voight, Sophia Bush as Erin Lindsay, Jesse Lee Soffer as Jay Halstead, Danny Mastrogiorgio as George Turner
- Director
- Steve Shill
- Writers
- Story: Dick Wolf & Warren Leight; Teleplay: Ed Zuckerman
Summary
“Chicago Crossover” takes up a case that began in Chicago, where firefighters pulled a man named Andrew Llewellyn from a fire along with a box of photos of abused children. Sgt. Hank Voight tells Benson the images tie to a ring that has trafficked children for over a decade, and that one boy in them is Teddy Courtney, half brother of his detective Erin Lindsay, who flies in with Jay Halstead. The ring, the Chess & Checkers Club, now streams abuse live to paying members, and its current victim is a boy named Henry; no one can trace the feed.
Aged-up photos match a juvenile arrest for solicitation under the name Ted Voight. A youth center where Teddy was sent leads the detectives to Jocelyn Cerpaski, a former resident now finishing high school, and she sends them to the West Village piers, where they pick up Teddy, still selling sex. He refuses to talk to Lindsay, and Benson holds him on a drug charge. Jocelyn turns out to be a victim of the same club, and in one video Teddy rapes her. Pressed by Benson and Lindsay, he says he volunteered so the abusers would not send in someone rougher, and he names George Turner, a guard at the center, as the man who recruited him. George, who also befriended Henry, runs; Lindsay is hurt in the chase and sent home with a concussion.
Voight arrives and bursts into George’s interrogation with threats until Benson warns she will arrest him if he tries it again. She then uses him as leverage: rather than be left alone with Voight, George admits he got $1,000 for each child he handed to a man in a gray SUV, who once complained about paying a $22.50 double toll. Benson and Voight pose as Henry’s parents to bring Jocelyn in. Facing Teddy, she recalls being driven blindfolded over a long bridge, and together they name an abuser called Bob whose takeout orders read Clinton. The toll points to the Verrazano Bridge, and Benson and Voight find Clinton in Eltingville, on Staten Island, rescuing Henry and arresting Clinton with two helpers.
Spoiler, the ending: A new “Tune in tomorrow” message shows the club is still running. Clinton demands full immunity before naming the man the children feared, and Benson sends him to the Tombs to reconsider. Within hours another inmate, Lester Davis, stabs him to death in protective custody after a call from a throwaway phone sold in Chicago. Lindsay then reports that Llewellyn and the officer guarding him have been shot dead, and Voight heads home as the hunt moves back to Chicago.
Why it stands out
- The middle hour of a three-show crossover that begins in the Chicago Fire episode “Nobody Touches Anything” and ends in the Chicago P.D. episode “They’ll Have to Go Through Me.”
- The 350th episode of the series, and Dick Wolf’s first writing credit on the show since the 100th episode, “Control,” in Season 5.
- Jason Beghe, Sophia Bush and Jesse Lee Soffer appear as Chicago P.D.’s Voight, Lindsay and Halstead, with Lou Taylor Pucci as Teddy.