Chicago Police Officers Brian Murphy and Jason Orsa resign in face of firing over off-duty beating of a known gang member that happened a decade ago

Two Chicago police officers have resigned in the face of their firing over the off-duty beating of a restaurant patron on the Northwest Side more than a decade ago.

Brian Murphy and Jason Orsa, both 12-year department veterans, stepped down effective Dec. 1, said police spokesman Frank Giancamilli.

Their resignations came a little more than a week after the Illinois Supreme Court denied an appeal of their dismissals and before the Chicago Police Board could move to fire them as soon as its monthly meeting Thursday night.

Even though the police board had originally dismissed the two officers in January 2011, both still remained on the force more than a decade after the incident because a Cook County judge had overturned their firings in 2012. They were reinstated on the force and given back pay.

Murphy, Orsa and another officer, Daniel McNamara, had allegedly just been drinking at a nearby bar when they went to eat at the Taco Burrito King restaurant at Higgins and Harlem avenues during the early morning of March 24, 2006. The trio, along with a Marine friend who had just returned from Iraq, were sitting at a table when Obed "OJ" DeLeon walked inside the restaurant and complained about a car blocking the parking lot.

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