The AB Won Pat International Airport was filled with law enforcement and island leaders for a significant occasion on Friday. 

Three Guam police officers and four corrections officers were recognized for successfully completing Guam Customs and Quarantine’s Basic Canine Narcotics Detection Course on Friday.

Corrections Officer I Ron Joseph P. Hocog is one of the newly certified. 

He was joined by his wife Tiffany Hocog and their son Riley. 

“Honestly, it’s a very surreal feeling. It was a very humbling experience. Going into this, I thought I knew how to handle dogs, but this is a whole other ball game,” said Hocog. 

Hocog is also a dog dad but training with drug detector dog 'Philip' kept him on his toes. 

“He’s a very outgoing dog. He’s a fast dog. With Philip he is very fast and I had to really harness my skills to match him,” added Hocog. 

Customs and Quarantine Director Ike Peredo said this training is more than a certification.

“It is an investment in capacity building across Guam law enforcement,” said Peredo. “These certified k-9 teams are now part of the most effective tools we have in drug interdiction. Their presence across our community acts as a powerful deterrence to illicit activity and a symbol of vigilance we maintain to protect our island.”

This comes as illegal drugs continue to infiltrate the island and threaten our community. 

Customs Colonel Franklin Gutierrez is the Assistant Chief of the Special Enforcement Division. 

“By putting our resources together and training other law enforcement officers, what we’re doing is actually creating a drug detector dog task force for the island of Guam and increasing protections. Normally, we would be the only detector dog unit on Guam. So when GPD and DOC needed assistance, we would have to move our resources from the border to help out,” said Gutierrez. 

As reported, just earlier this week, Customs officers caught a man arriving from Hawaii with pills from Mexico that tested positive for meth. 

“The main thing we also want to remind the public is that if you’re carrying any type of item whether they be prescription pills, they need to be in its original container. You’re only allowed about a 30 day supply when you’re traveling. The second thing is you should have a prescription and it should also be under your name,” added Gutierrez. “We don’t know if these are counterfeit pills so that’s another concern. We have this whole fentanyl issue that we’re dealing with right now. We’ve been making seizures of fentanyl on island and that’s still a big problem for us. We’re trying to stay on top of it.”

And the police department and Department of Corrections will now be better equipped in that fight against drugs thanks to these seven officers and their crime fighting canine partners.