[Wired] The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-jim-dolan-surveillance-machine/
Excerpt:
Soon after the Garden began to relax its Covid restrictions in the spring of 2021, Nina Richards was regularly going to Knicks games there. According to one former MSG security staffer, she became a fixation for Eversole.
Eversole, a former senior director of global investigations at Oracle, instructed his deputies to compile “work-ups”—open source intelligence dossiers—on her. He made sure she was in the Garden’s face-recognition system and ordered the Garden’s security apparatus to focus on her, former MSG security staffer Donnie Ingrasselino later alleged in a lawsuit. Not because she posed any kind of danger at that moment. Because Richards was a transgender woman, and Eversole allegedly wanted to keep her “away from the players.”
Eversole targeted Richards “because of her gender identity,” Ingrasselino added in his suit. Employees who were forced to conduct the surveillance were often uncomfortable, since they believed it to be a clear act of profiling, according to the first former staffer. “She posed no threat,” added a second former employee.
“She wasn’t taking pictures in restricted areas. She wasn’t trying to go places she shouldn’t be,” the source continued. “This is just a very large transgender woman, being a fan, walking around.”
But Eversole’s orders were explicit: Keep watching. According to the lawsuit, he showed Richards’ picture in several weekly meetings, misgendering her, and telling employees to watch out for “him or it or whatever it is.” Ingrasselino further contends in his court filing that “Eversole did not similarly limit access to others who socialized with athletes, including individuals who had extensive criminal histories and had the potential of posing a legitimate threat to MSG.”