PHILADELPHIA—Just two weeks after the videotaped beating of three suspects, Philadelphia's new police commissioner this week fired four officers, suspended three others and demoted a sergeant.

But if history proves the rule, the majority may never lose a day's pay.

The appeals process over police discipline in Philadelphia and some other U.S. cities tends to favor censured officers, criminologists and civil-rights lawyers say.

The police unions often have more experienced labor lawyers than city law departments, they say. Witnesses and evidence dry up as the appeals drag on for years. And arbitrators who judge the cases often try "to split the baby," in the words of one criminologist.

"In a termination case, that means the officer's usually coming back to the department," said criminologist Sam Walker of the University of Nebraska, who studies police accountability. "That is a serious national problem."

In Philadelphia, arbitrators reversed the discipline meted out to 13 officers involved in the taped beating of carjacker Thomas Jones in 2000.

In Cincinnati, the city lost each termination case that stemmed from police conduct during a series of race riots, conduct that prompted the Justice Department to intervene, Walker said.

And in Chicago, the Police Board of Review overturns 50 percent to 60 percent of the discipline ordered by the department, according to University of Chicago law professor Craig B. Futterman.

"A

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lot of due process was built in, to protect public servants," said David Rudovsky, a civil-rights lawyer in Philadelphia. "I believe in due process, but to get there (to arbitration), Internal Affairs had to find them responsible, the Police Review Board had to find them responsible. It seems to me that's fair enough."

The recent Philadelphia beating—which came days after a sergeant was killed on the job—shows officers furiously kicking and beating three shooting suspects as they are dragged from their car.

A somber Mayor Michael Nutter called the arrests, captured by a TV news helicopter, "67 seconds of seeming chaos out on the streets of Philadelphia." In office under five months, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his new police commissioner, Charles Ramsey, when Ramsey announced the firings on Monday.

"We have to be better than some of what we showed on the fifth of May," Ramsey said. "Unlike criminals on the street, we have rules that we have to abide by."

Two of the fired officers were probationary rookies with no right to appeal, the department said. The other two were suspended without pay for 30 days pending termination. Suspensions of five to 15 days were meted out to three other officers.

The Fraternal Order of Police promptly called the firings "a rush to judgment" and promised to challenge them.

Local FOP President John McNesby complained that the city wants police to fight a crime epidemic, but doesn't back them up when "something shaky happens."

But the You Tube era may force cities to take the kind of swift response seen this week in Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania criminologist Lawrence Sherman said.

"When we have videotaped evidence that allows an entire community to go to the Web, view the video and make up their minds, the idea of a one-year investigation just doesn't make sense," Sherman said.

He nonetheless expects all eight cases to be modified, if not overturned.

"That's what the history of these actions has been," Sherman said. "So now is a good time to talk about changes to the system, so that we can give the police commissioner the power to fulfill his responsibilities."

Everett Gillison, the deputy mayor for public safety, is a lifelong resident of West Philadelphia, where the mostly white police force in earlier decades often clashed with black residents, including members of the radical group MOVE.

He lived through a time when the sitting mayor, Frank L. Rizzo, could boast after a 1977 police beating that broke a police baton: "It's very easy to break some of those nightsticks nowadays." (Three officers were acquitted of civil-rights charges in that beating of a black motorist.)

"I'm an African-American male. ... I know the history of this city," said Gillison, who spent more than 20 years as a public defender. "We are in a far, far different place than where we were many years ago.

"I think that our response as a city underscores that we're supportive of our policemen—but when they ... cross the line, we will hold them accountable," he said.