{"id":208436,"date":"2026-06-02T14:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208436\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:16:10","slug":"love-island-usas-sean-reifel-quit-police-for-show-mayor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208436\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Island USA&#8217;s Sean Reifel Quit Police for Show, Mayor Says\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not all love for this Islander. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sean Reifel\u2014a 29-year-old from Bethlehem, Pa.\u2014quit his job as a police officer after less than a year on the force in order to join the season eight cast of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/love_island\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Love Island USA<\/a>, according to local officials. Now his resignation has drawn criticism from the city\u2019s police chief and mayor, who spoke out against the reality star ahead of the June 2 premiere on Peacock. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our police department spent a lot of time training,\u201d Bethlehem Mayor J. William Reynolds explained on May 29, per local outlet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc27.com\/pennsylvania\/pennsylvania-mayor-rails-against-cop-he-says-left-for-love-island-usa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noopener noreferrer nofollow\">WHTM<\/a>. &#8220;We paid thousands of taxpayer dollars to send him to the police academy. We are disappointed he left as we now have another vacancy in our department that is impossible to fill until next year.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Reynolds continued, \u201cI never thought I\u2019d see the day in America where reality show participation wins out over being a police officer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s not all love for this Islander. \u00a0 Sean Reifel\u2014a 29-year-old from Bethlehem, Pa.\u2014quit his job as a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-208436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}