The performer said slain New York City officer Jason Rivera was probably doing his job “incorrectly”
New York City actress Jacqueline Guzman has been dropped from her theater company after she went viral on TikTok with a video complaining about the inconvenience of a deceased cop’s funeral.
“We do not need to shut down most of lower Manhattan because one cop died for probably doing his job incorrectly,” Jacqueline Guzman said in the clip, taken while she is walking down a street that has been barricaded off. “They kill people who are under 22 every single day for no good reason and we don’t shut down the city for them.”
The actress went on to say that blocking off streets is “f**king ridiculous.”
“What if somebody is having a heart attack in this area? Nobody can get to them because it’s all blocked off for one f**king cop,” she said.
Guzman’s comments quickly spread across social media and caused outrage. Although the video was later deleted, that did not keep it from spreading.
Guzman’s acting company, Face to Face Films, released a statement distancing themselves from the performer.
“Face to Face Films does not support nor can condone these comments made about fallen Officer Rivera. As a result, she is no longer a member of our company,” they announced on Facebook.
Thousands turned out for Rivera’s funeral in Manhattan over the weekend to honor the slain cop.
“New Yorkers turned out by the thousands yesterday to help us honor our fallen brother. One person spreading hate cannot erase that,” New York City Police Benevolent Association (PBA) President Patrick Lynch told the New York Post in reaction to Guzman’s comments.
Rivera, 22, and Wilbert Mora, 27, were gunned down while responding to a domestic dispute earlier this month in Harlem. Rivera had been on the job for approximately a year, while Mora had been an officer for four years.
To mark World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday called for an international push to confront the inequalities that characterize NTDs, and ensure the poorest and most marginalized communities who are the most impacted, receive the health services they need.
North Korea fired a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile into the sea, in an apparent attempt to pressure the Biden administration over long-stalled nuclear negotiations.
American citizen believed to be a leader of an all-female military battalion charged with providing support to terrorists in Syria
A 42-year-old US citizen, Allison Elizabeth Fluke-Ekren, has been captured in Syria and transferred into the custody of the FBI to appear before a Virginia court next week, the US Department of Justice disclosed on Saturday.
According to now unsealed documents, the woman, believed to be a former teacher, played an active role in helping Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists to train women and children as suicide bombers in Syria. Known by several names, including some Arabic, she also allegedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks on a college campus and a shopping mall in the US.
Citing a report from a special agent who investigated the woman, including through information provided by a number of cooperating witnesses, US officials revealed that Fluke-Ekren allegedly organized and led an IS battalion, known as the Khatiba Nusaybah, which was composed solely of women. She trained them to use assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts, documents suggest, adding that over 100 women and young girls had been drilled by the US citizen on behalf of IS.
Terrorist leaders “were proud to have an American instructor,” while she herself “wished to engage in violent jihad,” witnesses suggested.
Children were also trained “on the use of AK-47 assault rifles and suicide belts,” the US Department of Justice stated in their report. Fluke-Ekren is now charged with providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, and faces up to 20 years behind bars.
The woman – who traveled from the US to Egypt in 2008, and then ended up in Syria after spending some time in Libya and Iraq – has allegedly been involved with “a number of terrorism-related activities on behalf of ISIS from at least 2014.” A potential attack on a college campus in the US was among those activities. In a plot apparently approved by terrorist leaders, she planned to plant a backpack full of explosives on the campus grounds and flee. The attack planning was put on hold after she learned she was pregnant.
In a different scenario, Fluke-Ekren allegedly told a witness about her desire to kill as many people as possible at a shopping mall in the US. To carry out the attack, she would have parked a vehicle full of explosives at the mall’s underground parking and then remotely detonated it. “She considered any attack that did not kill a large number of individuals to be a waste of resources,” according to the documents.
The former US teacher was radicalized to a level “off the charts,” according to a witness who interacted with her. Asked to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being extremely radicalized, the witness gave her “11 or 12.”
Fluke-Ekren has been married several times and has multiple children, according to the investigation. One of her late husbands, who she met in the US, was a sniper trainer for IS, while another, also now dead, allegedly worked on a project involving drones carrying chemical weapons.
