44 OHIO POLICE OFFICERS ARE CHARGED IN DRUG STING

CORRUPTION: The suspects are five law-enforcement agencies.

CLEVELAND-In what may be the largest and widest-ranging police-corruption
investigation in the country in recent years, 44 officers from five law
enforcement agencies were charged Wednesday with taking money to protect
cocaine-trafficking operations in Cleveland and northern Ohio, federal
authorities said.

The arrests were the result of a 2 1/2-year federal sting operation that
started as an inquiry into organized crime in Cleveland, officials said.
Along the way, investigators discovered a large ring of police officers and
Sheriff's Department corrections officers who readily hired themselves out
to be escorts and security guards for people they believed to be cocaine
traffickers but who were really undercover federal agents.

"It's the largest I'm aware of," said Tron Brekke, deputy assistant
director of the FBI's Office of Public and Congressional Affairs in
Washington, who until recently supervised the bureau's police-corruption
investigations. "There are other cases that may have dragged on for awhile
and may have had as many officers involved. For a single-day arrest, I
don't recall anything even close."

Brekke said he believes there had never been a police-corruption case
involving officers from so many different agencies.

The Cleveland case is the latest in a series of police-corruption
investigations that have struck cities across the country in recent years.
From 1994 to 1997, 508 officers in 47 cities have been convicted in federal
corruption cases, FBI figures show.

The Cleveland police-corruption investigation was a "spinoff of the
original undercover operation that targeted organized crime," said Van A
Harp, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Cleveland. Harp also
announced the arrest Wednesday of seven of what he called the "original
targets," suspected organized-crime figures whose charges concerning money
laundering, drugs, gambling and firearms violations were not related to the
allegations against the officers.

In the process of the investigation, federal agents got wind of a
corrections officer for the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department, Michael
W. Joye, who sold drugs to an undercover agent and indicated he would
provide security, first for the smuggling of illegal gambling machines and
then for drug deals, according to a 99-page affidavit. Joye, the affidavit
said, recruited 24 other officers and a deputy from the Sheriff's
Department and 18 personnel from four regional police departments - seven
from Cleveland, three from Cleveland Heights, six from east Cleveland and
two from Brooklyn, N.Y. - to help out in the deals.