A new Siri Shortcut called “Police,” available for users of Apple’s iOS 12, allows you to secretly record interactions with law enforcement by simply speaking a command to Siri such as, “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over.”
A Reddit user in Arizona, Robert Petersen, created the shortcut in September and made it available to the public; he has made some updates to it since. Once the app receives a verbal command, it goes into Do Not Disturb mode, turns down brightness, pauses sound or video and sends a message to a pre-selected contact letting them know where you are and that you’ve been pulled over. You can then press the record button to start filming a video of the encounter. Once the recording is stopped, it is sent to the chosen contact and the phone’s functions return to normal.
Petersen said he personally hasn’t had bad experiences with police, but he was “keenly aware that others have, particularly among minority groups.”
We spoke to Travis Yates, who is the CEO of the Courageous Leadership Institute and developed the Courageous Leadership Seminar. He often speaks about the importance of video and audio and Yates was not bothered by the Siri application.
“Video and audio almost always helps law enforcement and that is why I recommend it for law enforcement and the only danger of the public doing it on their own is editing the footage in order to make law enforcement look bad,” Yates told us.
The easy solution according to Yates is for law enforcement to record what they do. “We are seeing it on a daily basis across the country. Citizens are lying against law enforcement and that is being exposed through audio and video,” Yates said.
