Rapper 50 Cents (left) has supported his friend.
John Donahue, the deputy chief of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in the Detention Services Division, had enough of Floyd Mayweather’s complaints about his incarceration at Clark County Detention Center. So, Donahue refuted Mayweather’s complaints, point by point.
His request to be released and placed on house arrest was denied by a Vegas judge. Mayweather complained of lack of food, an inability to train, which, he claimed could threaten his career. He had been locked up less than two weeks of an 87-day stay.
Dr. Robert Voy, a prominent Las Vegas physician, said in a statement to the court on behalf of Mayweather’s request for house arrest that the fighter is consuming only 800 calories a day. But Donahue pointed out the CCDC was in compliance with American Correctional Association standards and was offering Mayweather at least 2,800 calories per day.
“The nutrition part, we’re maintained by ACA standards, which we’re accredited by, the facility is,” Donahue said. “We’re required to have him, a minimum, of 2,800 calories a day. He is getting that. He is choosing not to eat all his food. He’s picking and choosing between cookies and some other snacks that he has available to him. He’s not eating the food that’s being given to him.
Donahue, though, seemed exacerbated as he explained why it was impossible to accommodate Mayweather’s demands to be able to exercise better. “He has the ability to exercise in his cell,” he said, “if he so chooses to. He can do pushups, situps, inverted situps, that are pushups, if you will, but he’s choosing not to do that. He does get one hour of rec yard a day. He can go out and shoot basketball, if he wants to, or he can run around the rec yard. His claim is that he usually runs five miles a day. No inmate in the Clark County Detention Center can run five miles a day. It’s not geographically possible within the confines of the facility.”
Donahue also went to great length to explain that Mayweather’s jailers weren’t out to get the celebrity or treat him poorly by segregating him from the rest of the prison population.
He said Mayweather is kept in protective custody for his own good: “With his status as a celebrity, if you will, he is considered a high-profile inmate. To ensure his safety and, really, the safety of the other inmates, we have to go ahead and lock him down. We have to keep him separated from the general population. If we put him in the general population, the inmates wouldn’t stop. They’d actually be seeking him out, looking for money. Whether it was to hurt him or [to obtain his] five minutes of fame by hurting the inmate, or whether it was him having to protect himself, we would be in a liable situation. We have to make sure he’s locked down, he’s protected. It kept coming out that we were looking to punish, punish upon punishment, and that’s not the truth. We are looking to protect him. That’s our role.’
Mayweather was cavalier about his pending jail sentence while talking to reporters before his fight with Cotto in early May. Clearly, two weeks in prison has caused him to change his mind.
