The Secret Service is once again in hot water. This time, they were forced to apologize for breaking into a salon owner’s business during a fundraiser nearby for Vice President Kamala Harris in Massachusetts on July 27.
A Ring security camera recorded an agent approaching the front door of the Berkshire, Massachusetts salon and then placing tape over the camera.
Four One Three Salon owner Alicia Powers said that agents picked the lock on her building and for two hours, let in several people to use her bathroom.
Powers said that a Secret Service representative from Boston’s field office reached out to her and apologized after being contacted by Business Insider.
“He said to me everything that was done was done very wrong,” Powers told Business Insider. “They were not supposed to tape my camera without permission. They were not supposed to enter the building without permission.”
Brian Smith, the building’s landlord, reported that the Secret Service did not seek his permission to enter or use the building.
“Me and my dad own the building, and I have a crazy eccentric guy that lives upstairs,” he said. “And he didn’t tell the Secret Service they could use it, and I didn’t tell them, and my father didn’t tell them, and they had no permission to go in there whatsoever.”
Powers said that she knew that she would have to close her business that Saturday since Harris was arriving for her first campaign fundraiser since becoming the presumed Democratic presidential nominee.
She said that she would have been more than willing to allow the Secret Service to use her business if they had informed her.
“Whoever was visiting, whether it was a celebrity or not, I probably would’ve opened the door and made them coffee and brought in donuts to make it a great afternoon for them,” said Powers. “But they didn’t even have the audacity to ask for permission. They just helped themselves.”
What made things worse for Powers was that they left her salon unlocked after they left.
It took over a week after the incident for the Secret Service to reach out to Powers. A day after being contacted by Business Insider, the agency reported that they had been in communication with her.
“The U.S. Secret Service works closely with our partners in the business community to carry out our protective and investigative missions,’ Secret Service spokesperson Melissa McKenzie replied. “The Secret Service has since communicated with the affected business owner.”
We hold these relationships in the highest regard and our personnel would not enter, or instruct our partners to enter, a business without the owner’s permission,” she continued.
