



Hansen said when Barraco walked into the house, he approached the man first with police officers waiting nearby and attempted to speak with him to ask questions before he was arrested. Hansen was referring to Todd Barraco, 44, of Vassar, a former police officer and educator who was arrested during the recent sting operation when he arrived at the decoy house allegedly thinking he was meeting a 15-year-old boy for sex. “Shockingly, as you know, a police officer from Vassar was among those we arrested.” “We embedded, essentially, with the Genesee County Sheriff’s GHOST team as we have on numerous occasions in this latest investigation in Goodrich,” said Hansen. Hansen recently worked with Swanson and GHOST on an investigation that took several weeks of work, culminating in the arrest of 19 alleged predators over two nights at a house in Goodrich. Sadly, the problem of predators preying on children has not gone away and Hansen has continued to expose their activities, techniques and has brought awareness to their intentions. Hansen said he has developed relationships with various law enforcement, like Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson and the Genesee Human Oppression Strike Team (GHOST), to take viewers inside the commission of a felony and to continue to create dialogue and awareness about the dangers of child predators Over the years, he said he’s modified the way investigations are done to make it socially responsible through collaboration with law enforcement so the predators would face justice. “In the beginning, I thought we’d do it three or four times and then nobody would show up again…but they just keep coming.” “We’ve been doing predator investigations for 18 years this past February, which is stunning to me to think we’ve been doing it that long,” said Hansen, who grew up in West Bloomfield and worked for WXYZ Channel 7 and WDIV Channel 4 in Detroit early in his career. You continue to do it and you evolve to do it the best way possible the most socially responsible fashion so everybody gets a fair chance at justice and to continue to create this dialogue.”Įighteen years ago, while working as an investigative reporter for NBC, Hansen did the first “To Catch a Predator” program in which he and his crew lured men who wanted to have sex with children through decoys in chatrooms online to a place where they thought they were meeting a teenager – but were instead ambushed by Hansen and his camera crew. It is, undeniably, what I have become most known for,” he said. The awards and Emmys are for all the other work. “It has become a trademark – out of all the work I’ve done, it’s maybe 10 percent of the portfolio. Murrow awards as well as excellence in reporting by the Overseas Press Club for his work. NEW YORK, NY - When Chris Hansen did the first “To Catch a Predator” program for NBC nearly 20 years ago, he never knew exposing alleged pedophiles would become something of a trademark.Ī broadcast journalist for more than 40 years, Hansen has been honored with 10 Emmys, five Edward R.
