The US Secret Service was forced to apologize to a Massachusetts salon owner last week after he used the building’s bathroom without permission ahead of a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Salon owner Alicia Powers said Secret Service agents duct-taped her security camera and picked the lock to gain access to the building, after which various people had access to the salon’s bathroom for two hours.
Powers told Business Insider that she knew the salon would have to close, but was not informed of the Secret Service’s other plans.
“We also had a lot of people coming in and out of the bomb disposal, and I completely understand what they had to do because of the nature of the situation,” Powers told Business Insider. “At that point, my team felt like things were a little chaotic, and we made the decision to close on Saturday.”
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Footage from the Ring security camera at the salon’s front entrance shows a Secret Service agent approaching the door with a roll of tape and observing the locked door and camera. The agent then grabs a nearby chair and stands on it to cover the security camera with tape.
“There were several people coming in and out for about an hour and a half. They were just using my bathroom, the alarm was going off, they were using the counter without permission,” Powers told BI.
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“Then after they finished using the bathroom for two hours, they left, they left my building without locking it up, they didn’t even remove the tape over my camera,” she added.
The Secret Service is facing intense scrutiny over its handling of a local Massachusetts salon ahead of a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Powers told the outlet that emergency responders later told him that Secret Service agents in charge of security that day “were telling people to go in and use the bathroom.” The Secret Service told BI that agents “never” used the building without authorization, but acknowledged that agents had covered cameras with tape.
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“Whoever they were visiting, celebrity or not, I would probably open the door, bring them some coffee, some doughnuts and have them have a great afternoon,” Powers told BI, “but they didn’t even have the audacity to ask permission and just went ahead and ate it.”
Brian Smith, the building’s landlord, said no one Secret Service Agent Permission to use or enter a building.
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“My dad and I own this building, and we have a really strange guy living upstairs,” Smith told BI. “He didn’t tell the Secret Service he could use the building, I didn’t tell them, my dad didn’t tell them, so they don’t have any permission to go in there.”
Powers said that after the Secret Service’s Boston field office contacted the department about the incident, a representative from the office called her and apologized.
“He told me everything that was done was very wrong,” Powers told the outlet. “He should not have recorded my camera without my permission. He should not have entered the building without my permission.”
