Secret Service apologizes for Pittsfield salon takeover

The Secret Service broke into the Four One Three Salon in Pittsfield, used the restroom, taped over the security camera and left the door unlocked during Kamala Harris’s visit in late July, the salon owner told reporters.

Salon owner Alicia Powers told the Berkshire Eagle she would have “set up coffee and doughnuts for them” if the Secret Service had asked permission, but no one contacted her or her landlord about the entrance.

Harris visited Pittfield on July 27 for her first fundraising event since she became the presumed Democratic nominee for president. She was expected to raise about $1.4 million at an event at the town’s the Colonial Theatre. The local salon is located across from Colonial Theatre.

Powers told reporters the Secret Service agents appeared to tape over a Ring security camera on the property, broke in, used the bathroom without cleaning up after themselves and left the door unlocked on their way out. They even ate a few mints on the counter, she said.

Around 8 a.m. on July 27, Powers said, she got an alert from her security camera on the business’s back porch and could see a woman tape over the camera. She was on a previously scheduled vacation to Cape Cod at the time.

At 11:15 a.m., she told reporters, alarms began to go off and continued through about 12:40 p.m. Others cameras on the property showed people entering and exiting for two hours, Powers said. She drove home and reached the salon after crowds dissipated around 4 p.m.

Powers said she then notified Pittsfield Police, who directed her to Secret Service representatives.

Secret Service’s Boston office reached out to Powers to confirm that the agency entered the property, iBerkshire reported via a spokesperson for the agency.

“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,” the spokesperson said according to iBerkshire.

Powers said the Boston office apologized on behalf of the agency and offered to pay for any damages, cleaning or the business’s private alarm bill, which went off throughout the incident.