If you're ever pulled over, tell Siri. It will record your interaction with the cops.

Folks who use iPhones can use a simple command to hold police officers accountable for their actions if they are ever pulled over while driving. A shortcut on the phone using Siri, the smartphone's intelligent assistant, allows users to begin video recording automatically, CNN reports. The settings must be configured prior to actually using the command but could come in handy, especially if you are a person of color simply trying to survive the interaction. It is, of course, a sad thing to admit that those whose lives are at risk must figure out methods to hold the police accountable. The only thing that will correct these injustices is institutional reform, but while we wait for our local governments to act, this could be a useful tool.

The command has gained popularity over the last few weeks due to the ongoing anti-racism protests across the country. As we raise awareness about police brutality and interactions gone wrong, this tool is a way to ensure there is evidence of what happened. In the best-case scenario, cops simply follow procedure and move on. In the worst scenario, however, this command could save someone's life. All an iPhone user needs to state is: "Hey Siri, I'm getting pulled over." This will prompt Siri to put any music the user is playing on pause, decrease the brightness of their phone, turn on the "Do Not Disturb" mode to block all incoming calls, start up their front-facing camera, and start recording a video.

In addition to all this, the command sends a message to a predesignated contact to let them know that the user has been pulled over by a police officer. The message will also include their current location. Once the user has hit the stop button on the camera recording, a copy of the video is sent to the predesignated contact and another copy can be saved to iCloud or Dropbox. This way, there is always a copy on the cloud even if the user's phone data is wiped. The shortcut was created two years ago by Redditor Robert Petersen. He said in an interview last year, "I just wanted a way for anyone to have proof of their version of events in the unlikely scenario that something unexpected happens during a police interaction. And if one in 10,000 people find my shortcut useful at all I'd be glad."

Owing to the ongoing awareness campaigns about systemic racism and police brutality, the "Police" command has gone viral. After being updated to fix old bugs and glitches, the shortcut has now become incredibly popular. To download it, all you need to do is download the "Shortcuts" app on your iPhone. Then, run another shortcut in the Shortcuts app. Once you tap "Gallery" on the bottom right corner, you will see all the shortcuts you can run. Open up the settings, scroll down to and tap "Shortcuts," and toggle the "Allow Untrusted Shortcuts" switch to on. Finally, tap "Get Shortcut" after opening this link in Safari to download the "I'm getting pulled over" shortcut.