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Just hours before sunrise on a late-winter day in 2006, Obed DeLeon drove to a Taco Burrito King on Chicago's Northside to satisfy his pregnant fiance's hunger pangs. When he found a Chevy Camarao blocking the parking lot, he strode belligerently into the restaurant and demanded to know: Who's the "asshole" responsible?
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"What if I'm the asshole?" replied Jason Orsa, one of three off-duty Chicago police officers who had been drinking at a nearby bar, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"Then stop being an asshole and move your car," said DeLeon. Just then, one of the cops, Brian Murphy, jumped up from his seat with his service weapon drawn, pointed the semi-automatic pistol at DeLeon's head, shoved him against a wall and Orsa and the third officer, Daniel McNamara, joined in, too, along with a Marine friend who had just returned from Iraq, according to the Tribune.
DeLeon was punched, knocked down twice, kicked, hit and held facedown on the tile floor of the crowded restaurant. His shirt was ripped off, revealing gang tattoos on his shoulder and chest.
None of this, apparently, is in dispute. The question, then, is why, five years after the Chicago Police Department fired Orsa and Murphy, are they still on the force?
Despite surveillance footage of the event, and testimony from DeLeon and several other witnesses to the confrontation, a County Court judge overturned the police department's decision. But last month, an Illinois appeals court judge upheld the officers' dismissals, and in a rare rebuke of another judge, said he was "dumbfounded" by the initial judge's "inexplicable" ruling.
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"This is the reason why the general public has issues with police officers," said Joseph Mularczyk, 36, the other eyewitness. "It's misbehavior like this. It's covered up. It's pushed under the table, and here we are 10 years later (and) these guys are still on the Police Department."
Murphy and Orsa are now likely to be fired a second time, pending an appeal to the state Supreme Court. Louis Danielson, a sergeant who failed to conduct an investigation into the incident—he neither went to the restaurant or interviewed witnesses, according to the Tribune—originally received a six-month suspension, but that was overturned as well once Murphy and Orsa returned to the force. All were awarded back pay.
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