New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with Commissioner James O’Neill, recently announced to the public that the city’s entire police force will receive body cameras by the end of 2019 or early 2020.

It is still up in the air for who is paying for the body cameras; according to Bill de Blasio, both taxpayers and officers are “making a contribution.” A contract to outfit the entire police force with cameras could potentially worth up to a quarter of a billion dollars over a course of 14 years. NYPD police officers have been working without a contract since their last one expired in 2010.

The new agreement for the more than 23,000 officers will go into effect March 15 and includes back pay from 2012 through last year. The contract covers through July 31, 2017, according to the mayor’s office. Plans for the entire police force to be equipped with body cameras have been in the works for months. Officers hired after Mar 15 will make $42,500, almost a 1.3% bump in base pay compared to before. After 5 1/2 years that pay jumps to $85,292, according to the mayor’s office. Officers will also be entitled to a 2.25% pay differential under the new contract.

“We’re clearly asking officers to learn a new way of doing the work and to adjust to a technology and level of transparency they have not experienced before,” de Blasio said at City Hall. “Rather than a long, contentious fight over these issues, we found common ground.” He said the “additional compensation made sense” when tied to the expansion of body cameras.This past year, NYC selected VieVu, a company specializing in body cameras for police enforcement, to supply 5,000 body camera units. In addition to acquiring body cameras, the city has drafted a policy that requires officers to activate their camera during specific situations. However, due to existing rules or laws deciding when to activate their body cameras could possibly be a complicated ordeal. For instance, police officers potentially might not wear their body cameras to avoid ‘surveillance’ of a constitutionally protected activity.