The Troy University Police Department has made a new addition to campus designed to provide a safer environment for students, faculty and staff.

Troy University now has 12 new traffic cameras installed at every entrance of campus.

The new traffic cameras detected license plate information that will help the University Police Department determine when certain people enter and leave campus.

“We’ll get indications of sex offenders coming through,” says Troy University Police Chief George Beaudry. “We’ll get indications of violent offenders coming through, major felony type situation crimes. We also have the ability to add our own hot lists, so to speak, where we will input certain license plate numbers from cases that we’ve worked.”

The city of Troy and the university now have the same traffic camera system.

The University Police Department took the initiative to get the same camera system after using the city of Troy’s for a University incident that happened a few months ago.

“The incident that we had with the gunfire over at Newman, for an example, a few months back,” says Beaudry. “We were able to utilize their cameras to help us get license plate numbers for our suspect vehicles. So yeah, it was very beneficial for us to use that tool on the back end on the investigative side.”

And while some people may think that the new traffic cameras are for speeding drivers, Chief Beaudry wants people to know that the cameras are here for a bigger purpose.

These cameras don’t detect speed at all,” says Beaudry. “They have nothing to do with that. They won’t be used in that purpose. These cameras will make reads of vehicles coming on campus. We will only use it from our end for an investigative tool on the back end. On the front end it’s going to give us the indication that hey somebody that you’re looking for is on campus.”

For the full story watch Mackenzie’s report.