In its bid to bolster police numbers, should the NOPD have gotten rid of a rule requiring new recruits have 60 hours of college credit?

The department may indeed grow, but research suggest the officers it takes on could be more likely to use force on the job.

Is it worth adding officers who could be more likely to use force if it puts more cops on the street? Let is know what you think in the comments section below.

The research is mixed as to whether college-educated officers generally outperform their peers, according to a 2010 paper in Police Quarterly. Officers with degrees searched suspects and made arrests at roughly the same frequency as others, according to the paper.

However, officers with college education were much less likely to use force. That quantitative study validated the findings of one of its co-authors' previous studies.

That 2007 paper, by Michigan State Professor William Terrill, found that officers with some college were less likely to use "verbal force" (threats of violence) and those with a four-year degree were less likely to use physical force.

Those studies built on previous work that found college-educated officers to have less authoritarian attitudes.

"There's so much more discretion with the use of force and more room for biases to play out," Terrill said in an interview with the Pacific Standard. "High-school educated officers are more apt to say, 'I'm the law and I have the authority to make you do it, and I'm going to put my hands on you and make you do it.' Officers with a four-year degree are more skilled at resolving problems without having to resort to force. They're giving the citizen alternative means of compliance. They're not just relying on the stick."

Despite these findings, the authors of the Police Quarterly article stopped short of recommending that departments adopt college requirements for officers. "There is simply not enough quality evidence to determine whether higher education has a desirable effect on police performance," the authors said.

Recent data is hard to come by, but as of the year 2000, only 15 percent of U.S. police departments required some college education. Only 1 percent required a 4-year degree.