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There’s an old shortcut on the iPhone that could prove very useful in the case of police interaction.
It’s called Police, and it’s garnering a lot of attention because of how it can protect you in case of an encounter with police. The evidence gathered by recording could prove critical in the unfortunate event that the interaction takes a turn for the worse and escalates– an issue that has been very prevalent over the past few weeks following the murder of George Floyd.
Robert Petersen, the developer, told Business Insider in 2018 that “It seemed to me that if you’re getting pulled over, it couldn’t hurt to have a recording of the incident.”
Once the shortcut is downloaded on to your iPhone and “Hey Siri” is activated, simply say, “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over.” The shortcut will activate, your music will be turned off, the brightness on the screen will be completely lowered. An emergency alert will be sent to a contact of your choice, and then the phone will enter “do not disturb” mode and begin recording on the front-facing camera.
The footage could be more reliable than body cameras, which unironically tend to be switched off during a good number of encounters with police. (Why that is even an option is beyond me.) Even in cases where body cameras are working and evident, they don’t appear to hold any more accountability to officers of the law as incidents continued to happen since the implementation back in 2018.
There has been a new way to attempt to combat police brutality, and that is defunding the police. The idea is in the very infant stages, so there’s no real guide on what exactly that would look like, but something has to be done about the way police treat the people they are supposed to be protecting.
