Secret Service apologizes to salon owner over break-in, bathroom use during Kamala Harris event
The shear audacity.
The Secret Service has apologized to a salon owner in Massachusetts who claims an agent helped people break into her shop to use her bathroom during a nearby event for Veep Kamala Harris.
Berkshires businesswoman Alicia Powers says someone picked the lock and broke into her store for the bathroom — after a Secret Service officer covered a camera outside her salon with tape.
The people who proceeded to use the bathroom included a pair in emergency medical uniforms, a person in camouflage law-enforcement gear and someone in a dark suit and white shirt similar to a Secret Service officer who guarded the door, Powers said, citing footage.
A Secret Service rep was adamant that agents would not break into buildings like that — but did not deny that an officer covered her camera with tape, an act that was captured by surveillance footage, and appeared to cop some sort of mea culpa in a statement.
“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,” Secret Service spokesperson Melissa McKenzie said.
Powers said the head of the Secret Service’s Boston-based field office called her to apologize, according to Business Insider.
“He said to me everything that was done was done very wrong,” Powers told the outlet. “They were not supposed to tape my camera without permission. They were not supposed to enter the building without permission.”
The shop owner, who owns Four One Three Salon in Pittsfield, said the incident took place July 27, before Harris’ first major in-person fundraiser since President Biden dropped out of the race, paving the way for the vice president to become the Democratic presidential nominee.
The salon is behind Colonial Theatre, where Harris’ event was held.
She said her salon was closed before the fundraiser because of all the security mayhem,
“They had a bunch of people in and out of here doing a couple of bomb sweeps again — totally understand what they have to do, due to the nature of the situation,” she told the outlet.
“And at that point, my team felt like it was a little bit chaotic, and we just made the decision to close for Saturday.”
Then early that morning, a female Secret Service agent put duct tape over a Ring security camera at the salon, Powers said.
Footage of the ordeal was later posted on social media.
The agency has historically covered up certain cameras during sweeps of perimeters because of security concerns.
Later that day, another security camera inside the building detected four other people in it over a more than hour stretch, Powers claimed.
“There were several people in and out for about an hour and a half — just using my bathroom, the alarms going off, using my counter, with no permission,” Powers vented to Business Insider.
“And then when they were done using the bathroom for two hours, they left and left my building completely unlocked and did not take the tape off the camera.
“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,” she said. “But they didn’t even have the audacity to ask for permission. They just helped themselves.”
She claimed that an emergency medical services worker later told her that a Secret Service officer in charge “was telling people to come in and use the bathroom.”
The incident occurred about two weeks after would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks crawled up on a shed roof about 130 yards away from former President Donald Trump and fired multiple shots, including one that nicked his ear, during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pa.
A crowd-goer was killed and two others injured by the gunman’s bullets. Crooks was shot dead by law enforcement.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned during backlash to the security failures, and multiple investigations into the situation are under way.
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