Part 5: Guam Police corruption series: “If you don’t wanna get killed, you should shut your mouth.”

Dirty cops pulling over drug dealers, taking their drugs, then letting them go? Dirtier cops sniffing out the drug dealers trying to let Guam Police Department know about the other dirty cops? Drug trafficking in the prison facilitated by a cabal of dirty guards? A pre-dawn meeting in the warden’s office to threaten the life of a “snitch?” Allegations of police corruption have become a dime a dozen on Guam the past few years; nine times out of 10 the sources tell Kandit they’re too afraid to put their names to the accusations. But, in this story, one man put his name on the record, and to  a judge.

A man awaiting sentencing in the Superior Court of Guam told Judge Vernon Perez in open court two weeks ago he fled Guam during the pandemic and with the knowledge of his probation officer because his life was in danger. Not from criminals. But from cops.

“My life was in danger,” Zachary Carriaga told Judge Perez during a status hearing on his case held January 24. “I spoke to my [probation] officer about what was happening, but no one was listening,” he told the court.

GPD officer Benny Babauta

For several years after getting in trouble with the law for theft charges, Mr. Carriaga worked for the government as a confidential informant, or what he terms a “snitch.” He had been sentenced in one case against him to an 18-month stay at the Guam Department of Corrections; a term that began in 2017. For the other case, his sentencing depended on the cooperation he would give to police in their investigations of others.

“Mainly it was officer Benny Babauta who would take me and I’d tell him who had the drugs,” Mr. Carriaga told Kandit.

Through the last decade, he alleges the relationship became corrupt. “Basically he would pull people over and take their stash and money,” Mr. Carriaga said. “Then we’d meet behind the Dial-Rent-to-Own building in East Agana and he would give me some of the stash. That’s how I stayed out of jail.”

Kandit reached out to Mr. Babauta via email to ask whether these allegations are true, or otherwise to understand his side of the story. The veteran officer, known for his crusade against drug dealers by pulling over cars with expired registration tags or some other traffic violation and effectuating searches, responded that he would allow the chief of police to answer for him. We then reached out to chief of police Stephen Ignacio, who has not returned our calls for comment. Mr. Ignacio previously told Kandit the allegations of Guam police corruption he found in a recently-unsealed federal court document will take time for him to review and investigate. He said once he has had the opportunity to get a handle on the accusations in that separate matter, he would be prepared to answer questions.

Mr. Carriaga said officer Babauta was not the only police officer involved in the practice of abusing their police power in order to take drugs, cash, and other property from known drug pushers. “That’s why, even if there was a warrant out for me because I didn’t check in to probation, they would always let me go. And then I stopped working for them because I didn’t like what was going on.”

That’s when those outstanding warrants caught up with Mr. Carriaga.

Former Mandana supervisor and GPD officer Sang To

In 2016, he went to jail for a couple of months, officially for ‘violating the conditions of release.’ “What really happened is I stopped snitching for them, so they picked me up,” he said.

That’s when he met Guam Police officer Sang To. At the time, Mr. To was one of the supervising officers of the now-defunct Mandana Drug Task Force.

“Sang To would take me out of jail at night to snitch on people, but what he really wanted to know – or at least what he told me he wanted to know – was who were the dirty cops that were in bed with the drug dealers,” Mr. Carriaga said.

As Kandit previously reported, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI are building cases against current and former GPD officers who were involved with the Mandana Drug Task Force. The investigations stem from forensic evidence and statements from now-convicted drug dealers and other sources of information that reveal an alleged conspiracy between cops and the drug dealers they were assigned to bust.

“I was supposed to set up Benny Babauta,” Mr. Carriaga said. “I told Sang everything that I knew and how it all operated. He called up Babauta and warned him not to answer my call. He told him I was snitching on the cops! That’s when I knew at first that my life was in danger.”

Kandit reached out to Mr. To via email, on his personal phone, and by leaving messages at the Agat Precinct Command, where he is assigned. He did not reply to any of our attempts to get his side of the story.

Here is the content of the email we sent to Mr. To, which includes the questions we asked him to which he never replied:

“A man known to you – Zachary Carriaga – has alleged on the record to Kandit News that in exchange for his freedom, you conspired with him to use information he had on some of your fellow police officers whom Mr. Carriaga told you were involved in illegal activities. Namely: Personally taking narcotics from busted drug dealers, and pocketing those drugs.

“Mr. Carriaga told Kandit on the record that you turned around and revealed his identity as your confidential source/informant against police officers, endangering his life.

“Mr. Carriaga told Judge Vernon Perez on the record in a status hearing on CF0264-15 that his life is in danger. He told Kandit on the record that you endangered his life; that you are part of the reason his life is in danger.

• “What is your side of the story?

• “Why did you inform officer Benny Babauta about the sting?

• “Why would you remove Mr. Carriaga from his incarceration?

• “Under whose authority would you remove Mr. Carriaga from prison?

• “Who in the prison allowed you to do this? Was it warden Alan Borja, as Mr. Carriaga has alleged?

• “Who in the GPD knew about your activities in this matter?”

Prison warden Alan Borja

Mr. Carriaga said he feared for his life in prison, but was more fearful of what dirty cops may do to him once he was released from DOC, which occurred shortly before the pandemic.

“I didn’t want to give them any reason at all to bother me, so once I got out, I straightened up my life and I was hardly ever even on the road,” he said, referring to his fear that Mr. Babauta or one of the other ‘dirty’ patrol officers would pull him over without cause and harm him.

“He’s safer out there, for sure,” Carriaga’s attorney, Stephen Hattori said of Carriaga’s new life in the mainland U.S. “He turned his life around. He’s got a good job. And really, he has nothing to gain by telling this story. In fact, he stands to lose a lot if people go after him.”

“I just want the truth out there, you know, maybe so it can help other people who are now in my shoes, or maybe these bad cops can be stopped, you know?” Mr. Carriaga said of his motives. “I’ve been trying to explain this to probation, but they didn’t want to hear it, and I kinda thought, ‘who am I gonna tell this to? No one’s gonna listen to me.’ And then I saw your guys’s story about the federal investigation, and I thought, ‘I should call these guys. I should tell my story.'”

It’s a story Mr. Carriaga already has begun to explain to Judge Perez. And according to the judge, he wants to know more about what has happened. At the conclusion of the January 24 status hearing, he told both the prosecutor and the defense attorneys in the case that he will be calling a sealed hearing on the matter.