Fourteen current and former law enforcement officers are among 20 defendants charged in Mississippi and Tennessee with accepting bribes from drug dealers to gain police protection, which authorities have called a “monumental betrayal of the public trust.”
The arrests followed a years-long investigation by federal agents who posed as drug traffickers. Two of the defendants were Mississippi sheriffs.
Federal officials set up the operation after hearing complaints from real drug traffickers about having to pay bribes to agents.
The corruption network allegedly extended beyond the Mississippi Delta region to Memphis, Tennessee, and Miami, Florida.
“The initial complaints that initiated the investigation came from drug traffickers,” U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner of the Northern District of Mississippi said at a news conference Thursday.
Some police officers had received bribes of between $20,000 (£15,000) and $37,000, the prosecutor added.
The case involved undercover federal agents posing as drug dealers with fake narcotics, which the defendants believed to be 25 kg (55 lb) of cocaine.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey said the accused officers had “betrayed the public.”
“They betrayed the trust the public placed in them, dishonored the badge and undermined the hard work of good law enforcement officers in this state and region,” Bailey said during the news conference.
The arrests come as US authorities have launched airstrikes in South America against suspected drug traffickers.
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