Sounds like a job for Inspector Clouseau.
Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan reportedly hired a private eye to shadow a State Liquor Authority investigator amid the agency’s look at yanking the famed venue’s liquor license.
Several Dolan-owned properties were slapped with administrative charges after facial recognition technology was used to identify and deny entry to lawyers working on litigation against him.
The exclusion prompted the SLA to assign investigator Charles Stravalle, a retired police captain, to determine if MSG can keep serving booze at Knicks and Rangers games, The New York Times reported. Banning only some sports fanatics could violate state beverage laws requiring establishments admit the general public.
According to the Times, Stravalle called the NYPD after he was tailed for over 100 miles by a black Chevrolet — right up to his return home in Queens, where the Chevy driver remained camped out with a camera pointed toward Stravalle’s house.
Police later pulled over the Chevrolet driver, who was a private investigator.
The SLA is investigating whether banning some from entering MSG violates state beverage laws. Getty Images
Dolan’s private investigator trailed the SLA official over 100 miles to his home in Queens. Getty ImagesMSG Entertainment acknowledged it had hired a P.I to tail Stravalle, which it said was “a common and lawful practice,” according to court papers filed this week.
In addition to MSG, the SLA could also yank liquor licenses for Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater, also owned by Dolan.
In response to the four violations filed against him, Dolan filed a petition in Manhattan Supreme Court on March 11 asking a judge to halt the SLA offenses, calling the enforcement “an abuse of power.”
“This gangster-like governmental organization has finally run up against an entity that won’t cower in the face of their outrageous abuses,” Dolan told The Post last week.
Dolan’s use of facial recognition technology at the Garden has garnered the attention of the SLA, prompting its probe. Getty Images“While others that have been subject to this harassment may have been forced into submission or silence, we are taking a stand on behalf of our fans and the many small businesses who have long been subject to the SLA’s corruption.”
In the fiery 47-page filing, his corporate entity claimed the SLA’s “improper actions” were “an assault on not only MSG, but also all of its fans, who will be deprived of the full MSG experience if the SLA gets its way and strips MSG of its right to serve alcohol at its venues.”
In a statement, MSG co-counsel Jim Walden said the situation was “bureaucracy out of control.”
“MSG didn’t start this,” he stated. “What is happening at the SLA is just – it is a bureaucracy out of control. We have found credible evidence of actual collusion, with the SLA being weaponized to do the bidding of plantiffs’ lawyers. Now the SLA is blocking our effort to get all the evidence. We will expose the SLA’s misconduct through the legal tools we have to defend MSG.”
