Some Walmart employees in Texas are wearing body cameras as part of a pilot program to improve employee safety in stores.

Workers at several stores, located in Denton, Texas, about 40 miles north of Dallas, began testing the body cameras. The locations also have signage warning shoppers that body cameras are in use.

“While we don’t discuss the specifics of our security measures, we are always looking at new and innovative technology being used in the retail industry,” Walmart said in a statement to FOX Business.

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However, since the program is still in its early stages, the company is only testing it in this market. Walmart plans to evaluate the results of the pilot “before making long-term decisions,” the spokesman said.

An employee assembles shopping carts at Walmart in Burbank, California. (Robyn Beck/AFP via/Getty Images)

A person familiar with the matter told FOX Business that this test is part of a more holistic safety and security program and is not specifically designed as an anti-theft measure.

However, the move comes soon after TJX Companies — the parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods — said in June that it was equipping employees with body cameras to prevent theft.

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TJX said it began using body cameras in select stores in its U.S. portfolio, which also includes Sierra and Home Sense, over the past year as a means to “de-escalate incidents, deter crime and demonstrate to our associates and customers that we take security in our stores seriously,” a TJX Companies spokesperson told FOX Business in June.

An employee scans items at a cash register at a Walmart in Burbank, California. (Patrick T. Fallon/via Bloomberg/Getty Images)

The spokesperson specified that the cameras are carried specifically by loss prevention associates, who are trained in how to use the cameras effectively, and the footage “is only shared at the request of law enforcement or in response to a subpoena.”

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Businesses collectively lost $112.1 billion in 2022 to retail theft, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2023 National Retail Security Survey. According to NRF’s latest study, “The Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2024,” about 91 percent of respondents say thieves are showing more violence and aggression compared to 2019.

Walmart employees walk down an aisle in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

Given the ongoing problem, David Johnston, NRF’s vice president of asset protection and retail operations, told FOX Business that “retailers are doing everything they can to ensure the safety and well-being of their customers, associates and communities.” but that “the use of body cameras is still a newer technology being used in retail.”

According to Johnston, individual retailers are still in the middle of finding how this “technology works best in their environments.”