Love Island USA has another casting controversy on its hands, but this time it’s pretty much just coming from the mayor of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The upcoming eighth season of the show features a cop named Sean Reifel, and his former place of employment is not happy about his involvement. On Friday, the mayor of Bethlehem, J. William Reynolds, told local news outlet WHTM that Reifel had resigned from his duties in order to go on the show less than a year after he was sworn in. That choice, Reynolds said, has left his police department short-staffed and jilted: “Our 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,” Reynolds said. “I never thought I’d see the day in America where reality-show participation wins out over being a police officer.”
Reifel’s former boss police chief Michelle Kott is also upset about the 29-year-old’s resignation. He told local outlet The Morning Call, “I love Sean, he’s a good guy, he was a great officer, but I’m disappointed.” Kott explained that Reifel had to quit the force for good because a leave of absence is apparently not an option for someone who wants “‘x’ amount of weeks to go on a television show when everyone’s hurting right now and overtime is being utilized to fill those gaps.”
