The Secret Service (USSS) is a mess.
Alicia Powers, owner of Four One Three Salon in Massachusetts, said USSS apologized after an agent broke into the business to allow people to use the bathroom during a Kamala Harris fundraiser.
Powers closed her business when asked by USSS.
The USSS also said the agents “would not enter” the salon without Powers’ permission.
But security cameras caught one agent applying tape over the camera. From Business Insider:
At 8:10 that Saturday morning, a Secret Service agent — wearing a dark suit and open-collared white shirt, but no pin on her lapel — walked up to the salon’s front entrance while swinging a roll of masking tape in her left hand. She looked at the door. Then she looked at the security camera on the porch. Then she looked at the door again.She walked away. When she returned two minutes later, she grabbed a chair from the porch, stood on it, and taped over the Ring security camera that had been watching her.The door was locked. But later that afternoon, another security camera, pointing at the door from the inside of the building, spotted four other people over the course of nearly two hours.Two people wearing emergency medical services uniforms and one person in a camouflage law enforcement uniform walked in. The fourth person, wearing a dark suit and white shirt like a Secret Service officer, stood by the door.
No one bothered turning off the security alarm, which blared the whole time.
Powers told BI: “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.”
After two hours, the agents left the “building completely unlocked, and did not take the tape off the camera.”
The cameras caught two people wearing emergency medical services uniforms, one wearing a camouflage law enforcement uniform, and a person who looked like a USSS agent by the door.
An EMS worker told Powers that the person in charge of security told “people to come in and use the bathroom.”
The situation bothers Powers:
When Powers returned to the property later that day, she found the door’s lock looked like it had been picked, she told BI.The people who entered the Four One Three Salon didn’t do much damage aside from leaving an untidy bathroom behind, Powers said.But what bothered her was what she saw as sheer disregard for her business, by entering without permission and leaving the place unlocked when they left, she said.Powers said she felt “violated.””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 BI. “But they didn’t even have the audacity to ask for permission. They just helped themselves.”
Brian Smith, the landlord, also said, “he didn’t give the Secret Service permission to use the property.”
The USSS told Powers to contact the local police department, which had no idea about the incident.
Pittsfield Police Captain Matthew Hill: “I know for certain none of our members were involved in this.”
Seems like the USSS has a habit of passing the buck to local law enforcement. The agency has done this numerous times for the failed security at President Donald Trump’s rally.
The USSS apologized to Powers:
The day after BI initially reached out to the Secret Service for comment for this story — more than a week after it entered the business — an agency spokesperson said it had “since communicated” with Powers.”The U.S. Secret Service works closely with our partners in the business community to carry out our protective and investigative missions,” McKenzie wrote in an email to BI. “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 added.
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