Urbandale police officers on the streets will soon be adding a body camera to their uniforms.

Thanks to a nearly $14,000 donation from the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Grand Lodge of Iowa, 24 cameras will be hooked up to software already established at Urbandale’s police department.

Sergeant Gary Lang said the Odd Fellows group had some extra money floating around and wanted to invest in updated police wear in Urbandale.

“In meetings with the chief, they discovered how much it was going to take and how much we had under-budgeted for the cameras,” said Lang, “so they came up with the donation to buy the 24 cameras.”

Lang said the new cameras won’t require new equipment to store data from footage.

“The technology we have with our in-car cameras…these will sync with that,” said Lang. “So they’ll automatically upload when the officers get close to the station, and they’ll be stored on the same server.”

Lang said the department is still outlining how much extra storage is needed for the body cameras’ footage, but that will be worked out on a needs basis. Lang said right now, the department is working on moving officers through the training program and getting all the cameras up and running.

“We’re now just waiting on the rest of the order,” said Lang. “The officers also have to go through the new training and sign new policies, and then the cameras will be active by July 1st.”

Lang said he doesn’t believe the body cameras will change how officers act.

“We’ve got very professional officers that do a great job,” said Lang. “Everything they do now is on that car camera. And they use the cameras for their protection all the time.”