A.M. Brief: Do Beverly Hills Cops Play Copyrighted Music to Stop IG Posts?

Do Beverly Hills cops just really like playing music when they talk to citizens? Does a 3,000-person religious conference really count as “indoor worship?” How far has L.A.’s own variant of COVID-19 spread across the world? All this and more in today’s morning news brief.

Morning News Rundown

Do Beverly Hills police officers play copyrighted music to prevent citizens from posting interactions to social media? VICE has reported on three such incidents, the latest of which depicts an officer playing The Beatles’ “Yesterday” as he speaks to a person filming the conversation. The music—even if only played in the background—would conceivably get flagged by Instagram’s algorithmic copyright filters, and thus prevent it from being shared virally on that platform. [VICE]

Grace Community Church in Sun Valley plans to hold a massive indoor conference expected to draw over 3,000 attendees. Although the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of permitting indoor worship, Public Health officials argue that the conference would constitute a non-worship event, and therefore would still be prohibited under the existing county order banning large gatherings. [L.A. Times]

Is L.A. exporting its COVID-19 strain worldwide? A mutant variant of the virus first reported here in Los Angeles has now been detected in 19 states, Washington, D.C., and six countries. [LAist]

The Farmer John meat processing plant that makes “Dodger Dogs” is facing a growing COVID-19 outbreak, L.A. County Public Health records show. Over the past six weeks, the number of confirmed infections has more than doubled to 779.  [NBC Los Angeles]

After the California Supreme Court tossed out a previous lawsuit, a group of app-based drivers and the Service Employees International Union have refiled a legal challenge to Proposition 22 in Alameda County Superior Court. The lawsuit, which is more or less the same as the one thrown out last week, aims to reclassify app-based workers as employees instead of independent contractors. [L.A. Times]