\n<\/p>\n
His client is<\/span> a New York cop who was injured during a private security gig at Madison Square Garden<\/a>. He sued the Garden on behalf of the cop.<\/p>\n Now John Scola, a lawyer well known for representing local police officers, is banned from the high-profile arena and several others owned by the famously controlling James Dolan.<\/p>\n For years, Dolan openly excluded entire law firms from his venues if a single attorney was in any sort of legal dispute with the Garden; those bans would then be enforced by Dolan\u2019s increasingly sophisticated facial recognition system<\/a>. What wasn\u2019t entirely clear was whether Madison Square Garden was continuing to grow its legal blacklist. A letter to Scola, dated April 30 and reviewed by WIRED, suggested this practice continues. \u201cAny tickets to MSG Venues,\u201d the letter reads, \u201care hereby revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n The ban also highlights the fissures in the multilayered relationship between New York City\u2019s public servants and its most iconic arena. As WIRED reported last month, MSG security functionally acted as a second, unsanctioned surveillance force in midtown Manhattan\u2014without the New York Police Department\u2019s formal permission. (NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani called this expansion beyond the Garden\u2019s walls \u201cdeeply troubling<\/a>,\u201d and promised further investigation.)<\/p>\n Dolan says that the biometric surveillance system is in place to stop dangerous actors from entering his properties\u2014”if you’re a terrorist, [the list] will say that’s a terrorist,” he once told the local Fox affiliate\u2014but the NYPD hasn\u2019t shared facial recognition or any other kind of data with the Garden. The Garden did, however, add a New York police officer\u2019s photo to the many, many others in its facial recognition database, as WIRED reported. “New Yorkers should be able to go to a game or a concert without their rights being violated,\u201d New York attorney general Letitia James told the Pablo Torre Finds Out<\/em> podcast<\/a> in a statement. \u201cMy office is closely reviewing the latest reporting on Madison Square Garden surveillance tactics.”<\/p>\n On the other hand, the Garden does hire NYPD officers, through the city\u2019s paid detail program<\/a>, to augment its own security forces. That\u2019s what happened in February of 2025, when a lightweight boxing match was being held at MSG\u2019s then-named Hulu Theater. The audience was likely to be large and \u201crequir[e] active crowd control,\u201d according to the lawsuit, so the Garden brass figured they\u2019d need eight off-duty cops to help. \u201cDespite that determination,\u201d the suit claims, \u201conly two officers were actually present.\u201d One of them was seven-year NYPD veteran John Przybyszewski<\/a>.<\/p>\n