By C1 Staff
CHICAGO — Call outs from correctional officers spiked the same weekend Pacquiao and Mayweather entered the boxing ring.
CBS News reports that over 600 correctional officers called in sick to the Cook County Jail during the same weekend the long-anticipated fight occurred. Officials say it’s more than double the number of sick calls they usually see on weekends.
Sheriff Tom Dart said he suspects many of those officers took a shift off to watch the so called “Fight of the Century.”
“The indication that we have gotten is the boxing match had a lot to do with people calling in sick,” he said.
It’s believed that at least some of the officers who called off had legitimate reasons for doing so, but those who skipped work to watch the fight put an unnecessary strain on other officers who had to work overtime.
The last big spike in sick days at the jail was Feb. 1, when a blizzard dumped more than a foot-and-a-half of snow on Chicago the same weekend as the Super Bowl.
Then the absences were due to jail staff being unable to report to work due to the weather, and a lockdown was ordered.
The focus on sick leave abuse follows a report from the Sun Times where an officer was paid $29,467 for a single day’s work last year.
The pay was for a day of overtime on June 15, 2014, but that 675 hours were mistakenly entered into the sheriff’s payroll system.
The officer returned the money three months later after the error was discovered.
The report encouraged the sheriff’s department to better supervise overtime payments.