CONWAY, Ark. – The Conway Police Department now has a new tool.

As of Monday, all uniformed officers with the department are required to wear a body camera while on duty.

“Because they are on our bodies and they are moving if we are doing vehicles searches all of this stuff is going to be seen on these cameras,” said Patrol Seargent Tom Kennedy.

The department got permission to purchase 85 of them. The city’s Mayor Bart Castleberry said the city allotted a little under $300,000 dollars to the police department to pay for the new technology as well as the personnel to keep up with it.

“You have to have redaction equipment so that you can know what can be released with the FOI. You have to have an officer who is going to be redacting and stuff so we had to have people in place for that,” explained Castleberry.

This process took about two years between testing different cameras and securing the funds.

“It is not just transparency it is also accountability. These cameras are just going to give us another angle,” explained Sgt. Kennedy.

Over the next few weeks, the department will work on syncing the body cameras with the current in-car camera system. Both will begin recording when blue lights are activated.