LaRoyce Hawkins to leave Chicago PD after 13 seasons

LaRoyce Hawkins is departing Chicago PD.

After 13 seasons, the original cast member is set to say goodbye to the NBC police procedural as a series regular, Deadline reports.

He will return to wrap up his character Kevin Atwater's storyline in the first two or three episodes of the upcoming Season 14.

Hawkins joins fellow PD major cast members Jesse Lee Soffer and Tracy Spiridakos, who also recently exited the cop drama.

Hawkins debuted as Atwater in the Chicago PD series premiere in 2014 and has been a fan-favourite across the show's 13 seasons to date.

A handsome, honest and loyal character, viewers hoped Atwater would find someone equally as wonderful to settle down with. He didn't; then he did, in the shape of a former platonic friend, Tasha, who promptly moved to Miami, not realising she was pregnant.

In real life, Hawkins keeps his personal life relatively private. He is not married, but is father to a nine-year-old son, Roman.

Chicago PD follows the uniformed patrol officers and the Intelligence Unit of the 21st District of the Chicago Police Department as they pursue the perpetrators of the city's major street offences.

The show is currently casting a new series regular, a Black cop who is an "agent of chaos".