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Detection devices that outsmart the criminally minded
Anthony Harris (MBA 1979) is engineering a more secure world as president and CEO of Campbell Security Equipment Company (CSECO), the world’s leader in portable contraband-detection equipment. Devices made by the Alameda, California-based company enable agents from the Department of Homeland Security, US Customs and Border Protection, and about 60 foreign governments to detect even the most cleverly concealed drugs, cash, and guns.
“I come from inner-city Chicago, an area that was decimated by drugs,” says Harris. “To think we can do something to prevent some young people from following the wrong path is quite fulfilling.”
CSECO makes the Fiberscope, a fiber-optic device resembling a plumber’s snake that can be fed into hard-to-reach places such as a gas tank. As Harris explains, agents often find guns, drugs, and identification documents in northbound vehicles. In those going south, it’s usually cash.
Harris received his engineering degree at Purdue University, where he joined a campus group of black engineers who supported one another. In his senior year, Harris took the idea nationwide by cofounding the National Society of Black Engineers, which now has 30,000 members.
(Published April 2014)
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