Boston field office head of the Secret Service apologized Thursday for breaking into a salon on July 27 to allow agents and others to use the bathroom without permission from the owner during a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Berkshires salon owner Alicia Powers said that a Secret Service agent covered her security camera with tape and then broke the lock on her building. After a number of different people used the bathroom over about two hours and were encouraged to do so by the agents, Powers said they left the building unlocked and vacant.
At first the agents denied that they had broken in. After confronted with video evidence from cameras inside, however, the leadership did apologize.
"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.”
The salon was behind Colonial Theatre, the site of the fundraiser. The salon owner decided to close on Saturday because of the high security presence in the area on Friday and the "chaos" it brought.
She said she felt "violated" by the incident.
“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 told the outlet. “But they didn’t even have the audacity to ask for permission. They just helped themselves.”
Powers’ landlord, Brian Smith, also said that the Secret Service “had no permission to go in there whatsoever.”
The Secret Service agent who apologized offered to have the salon cleaned, to cover the alarm bill for the day, and to come to the shop and apologize in person.
Powers said she would accept the offers.
It's yet another black mark on the Secret Service's reputation after it failed to protect former President Donald Trump from a gunshot that grazed his ear during an assassination attempt on the same day as the Harris event.
Security and communications failures led to a gunman not being stopped before shooting at Trump even though he was noticed as a person of interest almost 2 hours before Trump took the stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Another rallygoer was killed by one of the gunman's bullets, and two more were injured.
No doubt this incident will be added to the growing list of investigations into the agency.
