Op-Ed: Is America Waking Up? Reaction to Cop-Insulting Actress May Say It All

Maybe Americans are waking up to the fact that we need the police, and that they aren’t our enemies or psychotic killers.

Last month, 🚔New York Police Department officer Jason Rivera, who was only 22 years old, was shot and killed in the line of duty while responding to a domestic violence call in Harlem. Another police officer, 27-year-old Wilbert Mora, was shot during the same incident and died four days later. (This is just one reason why police officers not only need personal protective equipment, but they need to use it.)

During Rivera’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, thousands of police officers crowded the closed streets to pay their respects. Plenty of citizens were among the sea of blue.

By and large, it seems that New Yorkers accepted this temporary inconvenience to allow proper honor to be given to a man who gave his life trying to help them. However, the scene seemed to trigger Jacqueline Guzman, an actress with Face to Face Films, a theater and film company.

In a TikTok video that has since been removed, Guzman complained about the streets being closed. She said officials “do not need to shut down most of Lower Manhattan because one cop died for probably doing his job incorrectly.”

Not only is this rude and tone-deaf, but it ignores the fact that the streets were shut down to accommodate the crowds. Ms. Guzman wasn’t finished, though.