Cedar Park officers issued body cameras

It's a growing trend in law enforcement. More and more officers are wearing body cameras. The Cedar Park Police Department is the latest to outfit every single officers with a body camera.

"It's a fairly simply toggle switch to turn it on," said Training Officer Cale Hawkins. Hawkins is helping to train his fellow officers on the new tool they now have.

When a CPPD officer answers a call or has interaction with the public he or she will be wearing a body camera. The camera captures what the officer is looking at and even picks up some of the audio.

"Our policy states that whenever we have interaction this camera will be rolling," said Hawkins.

"I think we're at the forefront of a nation wide trend," said CPPD Chief Sean Mannix.

Even Chief Mannix wears one of the cameras. "From what they do it gives us the ability to see what really happens out on the scene and the perspective of just how well our employees are doing their job," said Mannix.

Each camera costs $500. It's money that the chief says is well spent and was worked into the budget. "Video evidence is considered best evidence as it relates to helping to reconstruct what happened on the scene," said Mannix.

Once an officer is finished with their shift they load the video from the camera to the cloud where it's stored. Mannix believes it's just a matter of time before other agencies are outfitting all of their officers.

The project started with motorcycle officers first since they do not have dash cameras.