CHICAGO | Fifteen Chicago-area law enforcement officers accused of providing armed security for large-scale drug deals "sold out their badge" during the course of a broad anti-drug sting, a federal law enforcement official said Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's comments at the Dirksen Federal building came during a news conference detailing charges against four Harvey police officers, 10 Cook County Sheriff's Department officers and one Chicago police officer who are among 17 people charged with helping to broker and guard purported drug deals that were set up by federal agents.

Police and drug dealers shouldn't mix, Fitzgerald said.

"They ought to be afraid of the police, not turning to them for help," he said.

The 17 defendants are accused of accepting between $400 and $4,000 each on one or more occasions to serve as lookouts during a dozen different drug transactions of kilogram quantities of cocaine and heroin.

In two cases, officers met planes arriving at a suburban airport believing they were piloted by drug runners, and guarded duffel bags of supposed narcotics as they were taken to drop-off points -- retail and hotel parking lots in Homewood, Tinley Park, Oak Lawn, Matteson and Bolingbrook -- for collection by "dealers."

But the pilots were federal agents, as were the dealers. And the individual who brokered the drug transactions as an employee of an unidentified-Harvey business was an undercover FBI agent who became the hub in multiple spokes of corruption.

Charged in connection with the case are:

-- Harvey Police officers Archie Stallworth, 36, of Harvey; Dwayne Williams, 42, of Country Club Hills; Antoine D. Dudley, 28, of Harvey and James Engram Jr., 41, of Calumet City.

-- Cook County Sheriff's correctional officers Ahyetora A. Taylor, 28, and Raphael Manuel, 32, of Glenwood.

-- Cook County Sheriff's officers Diallo S. Mingo, 34, of Calumet City; Antwon Funches, 34, of Chicago; Timothy Funches Jr., 26, of Chicago; Daniel L. Lee, 31, of Chicago; Julius L. Scott Jr., 34, of Richton Park; Richard O. Hall, Jr., 35, of Chicago; Robert L. Kelly, Jr., 32, of Glenwood and Jermaine E. Bell, 37, of Lynwood.

-- Chicago police officer Kyle T. Wilson, 31, of Chicago.

Taylor and Bell are both members of the Army National Guard serving in Afghanistan, warrants have been issued for their arrests.

Also charged are Antonio B. McCaskill, 30, of Harvey and Tavis Ramsey, 31, of Chicago, who are not law enforcement officers.

The defendants are scheduled to make initial court appearances at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago at 3 p.m. Tuesday.

"Ideally, it should be hard to find one corrupt police officer and it should never be easy to find 15 who allegedly used their guns and badges to protect people they believed were dealing drugs instead of arresting them," Fitzgerald said in a prepared statement issued Tuesday afternoon.

Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI, echoed those sentiments.

"The almost systemic corruption that this investigation uncovered is quite troubling, especially given that most of those charged are sworn law enforcement officers, " Grant said. "One would have hoped that the many public corruption investigations that have previously been announced would have served to deter this type of conduct. Apparently, that is not the case."

According to a prepared statement from Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, each of the Cook County officers charged will be suspended with pay pending a hearing next week. He said protocol requires the department to request each officer be suspended without pay, which will can then lead to a request for termination.

Dart said his agency in January uncovered evidence of alleged wrong-doing by some of those charged Tuesday.

"In the course of that investigation, we learned the FBI had been pursuing the same men for five months," said Dart, who commended the work of Cook County and FBI investigators. "Though we had been aggressively pursuing a case, we withheld action, pursuant to a request by the FBI, allowing their agents to complete their investigation, which led to the charges announced today."

Harvey Police officials were preparing a statement Tuesday morning on the FBI's arrests, city Spokeswoman Sandra Alvarado said. Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg likely will not speak about the investigation today, she said.

FBI agents converged on the Harvey Police Department Tuesday morning, an FBI spokeswoman confirmed, declining to reveal more about the nature of the investigation.

Brenda Thompson, a 2007 Harvey mayoral candidate, called Tuesday a sad day for the city.

"I know that if there is corruption in the police department there's corruption in the city. The police department is supposed to keep us safe," she said, adding the federal investigation is a good start toward a new day.

"This is the beginning and hopefully justice will prevail in Harvey. We deserve better," Thompson said.

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Chicago, who represents Harvey and pushed for an investigation into its police department more than two years ago after issues arose unrelated to Tuesday's charges, said the federal investigation could remove "crooked cops from the beat for a long, long time."

"It's a tragic day when the FBI must play crime-stopper against a local police department," he said. "But I welcome it and the citizens welcome it."

-- Times Staff Writer Deborah Laverty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.