{"id":209638,"date":"2026-06-03T16:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/209638\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T16:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:30:10","slug":"pennsylvania-mayor-and-police-chief-disappointed-after-local-officer-quit-to-join-love-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/209638\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania Mayor and Police Chief \u2018Disappointed\u2019 After Local Officer Quit to Join \u2018Love Island\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sean Reifel was working as an officer at the Bethlehem Police Department in Pennsylvania when he made a drastic life choice, resigning from his role<\/a> in law enforcement to pursue reality TV after being given a chance to join Love Island.<\/p>\n

However, his decision clearly ruffled some feathers back home as both the town\u2019s mayor and the police chief shared their disappointment in Reifel\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur police department spent a lot of time training and 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 Mayor J. William Reynolds told local news outlet ABC station WHTM<\/a>. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d see the day in America where reality show participation<\/a> wins out over being a police officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her part, Reifel\u2019s former boss and Police Chief Michelle Kott revealed that the department does not allow officers to take on second jobs, leaving Reifel no choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Sean, he\u2019s a good guy, he was a great officer, but I\u2019m disappointed,\u201d she said, according to Entertainment Weekly<\/a>. \u201cJust because we work so incredibly hard to try to recruit the best people we can to be part of the Bethlehem Police Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Bethlehem Police Department<\/p>\n

She explained that the department is \u201cstruggling to fill vacancies,\u201d adding, \u201cAt this time, I don\u2019t think there\u2019d be a department that would be willing to allow someone to leave for \u2018x\u2019 amount of weeks to go on a television show when everyone\u2019s hurting right now and overtime is being utilized to fill those gaps. Officers are getting burnt out. It\u2019s just a bad look to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reifel worked as an officer in Bethlehem for less than a year<\/a> before quitting to join the reality dating show<\/a>. Season 8 of Love Island premiered Tuesday, June 2.<\/p>\n

This story Pennsylvania Mayor and Police Chief \u2018Disappointed\u2019 After Local Officer Quit to Join \u2018Love Island\u2019<\/a> first appeared on InTouch Weekly<\/a>. Follow InTouch Weekly on Yahoo<\/a> so you don\u2019t miss what\u2019s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Reifel was working as an officer at the Bethlehem Police Department in Pennsylvania when he made a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1256,90372,28,30,29,8669,10846,90371],"class_list":["post-209638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-bethlehem-police-department","tag-love-island","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-police-chief","tag-police-department","tag-sean-reifel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209638","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=209638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}