But the cities do have some similarities: both cities have a strong musical legacy, both cities have a waterfront, and both cities have had economic setbacks. Both cities also have had a shrinking population and areas that are largely uninhabited, in Detroit’s case due to moving out and repossession and demolition of property, in New Orleans’ case, due largely to the path of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction.

And they share another legacy: a history of police brutality and communities who are determined to improve the situation. New Orleans has at times had the worst allegations per capita of police abuse.

Both cities have faced deficits that have put a lot of pressure on the police departments in terms of staffing and programming. Less community policing contributes to police brutality, studies show. In addition, one of the critical components of a less brutal police force is college-educated officers. More highly educated police officers tend to be successful graduates of the police academy, they tend to have more life experience and are able to interact more effectively with the public. And most importantly, they seem to have better abilities in terms of defusing testy, dangerous situations.

So, what is New Orleans doing? The city with a history of high brutality has just removed the requirement that officers have at least 60 semester college hours. The city took this step because they felt that the requirement got in the way of recruiting new officers. The requirement had only been around since 2010, a year that only one-third of the police academy recruits passed the examinations to graduate.

In essence, New Orleans is making a decision to increase their staffing but at the risk of hiring less educated officers, possibly ones more prone to police brutality.

Detroit Police currently do not require any college semester hours in order to enroll in the police academy, but their website indicates that those who do have law enforcement educational backgrounds will “have an edge” in the the academy’s educational components.

More recently, teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis. The incident is under investigation by both the FBI and the St. Louis Police Department. Friends of Brown maintain that the teen was unarmed and he had his hands in the air when he was shot. The Ferguson police maintain that Brown attempted to hit an officer and take his gun from him. There have been protests and even riots, including looting, since the Brown incident, as well as gunshots fired at helicopters flying over Ferguson.

In both incidents, critics of the police departments cited racial motivations for the brutality. Ferguson is a largely African-American town, while the police department is primarily white.

In New York, the police department is being asked by community advocates, based upon a recommendation of Judge Shira Scheindlin, to consider wearing body cameras, as a way to dial down police brutality. At this point, there is no word as to whether the NYPD will consider this proposal. Their police union opposes body cameras, citing the accumulation of other gear that must be carried on a police officer, and expressing concern that overloading the officers would interfere with the ability of the officer to do their job effectively. The union also commented on the huge number of cameras in New York, which obviates the need for body cameras.

There are other jurisdictions that are utilizing police body cameras, including Oakland, New Orleans, San Diego and Spokane.

There are pilot programs in both Cleveland and Detroit, as well as Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco and Washington.

In Detroit, twenty officers in the 2^nd Precinct are now outfitted with Taser Axon Flex and body-mounted cameras. The cameras, manufactured by Taser (the maker of stun guns) have the capacity to be uploaded to a data storage device. The cameras cost between $300 and $500. Implementation of the program is new, as the cameras were just distributed in April of 2014 and there is not funding in place for future purchases.

The Detroit Police Department has been under the oversight of the Department of Justice for previous episodes of police brutality. The cameras are intended to supplant the use of on-body microphones, which are being used erratically by police officers; it is not clear if the poor usage statistics of the on-body microphones are intentional or unintentional on the part of Detroit police.