CHICAGO - A Cook County, Ill.
sheriff's spokeswoman says an officer committed suicide in a federal lockup
after he and his partner were arrested during a corruption sting.
Cook County sheriff spokeswoman
Cara Smith says 45-year-old Stanley Kogut was found Tuesday hanging from a bed
sheet in his cell in Chicago's federal Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Kogut's partner, 44-year-old Robert Vaughan, later appeared in U.S. District
Court on charges of conspiracy.
It wasn't immediately known if
Vaughan has an attorney.
Smith says the officers were assigned to the
federal High Intensity Drug Task Force. A federal complaint says they were
arrested Monday in Bedford Park after allegedly ripping off an undercover FBI
agent posing as a drug dealer.
Authorities say they took about
70 pounds of marijuana from an undercover FBI agent's vehicle.
Kogut was a member of the Cook
County Sheriff's Department since 1977, according to Smith, who called his
death "a tragedy on multiple levels."
Federal prosecutors allege
Vaughan and Kogut and another man, 44-year-old Jimmy Rodgers, a former Lyons
police officer, conspired to use their positions as cops to rob people of
marijuana, contraband cigarettes and money, reports CBS Chicago.
Rodgers reportedly pleaded
guilty to extortion earlier this year as part of a plea agreement in which he
was sentenced to five years in prison.
