A pretrial hearing in Genesee County Court on Monday, December 5, revealed that a former part-time Vassar Police officer caught this past March during a Genesee Human Oppression Strike Team (or GHOST) investigation struck a plea deal with prosecutors.
45-year-old Todd Barraco, also a former assistant principal in the Vassar School District, was one of 13 people caught in a sting where Genesee County Sheriff and founder of the GHOST Chris Swanson teamed up with Chris Hanson of How to Catch a Predator fame. According to Hanson in an interview with ABC12, “He was there for a child and it was unmistakable from the chats and the phone calls and everything that went into it,” later noting that there had been handcuffs and three guns found in Barraco’s car during his arrest.
Barraco is alleged to have been seeking sex with a 15-year-old girl during the four month long investigation, meeting a decoy and being arrested and charged with three felonies instead. The three felonies included using a computer to commit a crime, accosting a minor for immoral purposes and child sexually abusive behavior, charges that could have put him behind bars for up to 44 years in prison, had it not been for the recent plea deal, where he pleaded guilty only to the computer related charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years.
Barraco’s arrest in March caused some concern, as Barraco had pursued jobs in education since 2009. He was let go from Vassar Public Schools in 2020 for what court records quote as a “failure to establish a positive professional relationship with students,” with further records reporting numerous complaints against him by both school staff and parents; however, he was not working with any school at the time of his arrest.
Barraco has been in law enforcement since 2001, being fired from the Vassar Police Department upon his arrest. Throughout his career in both fields, he hopped from place to place, working for Oxford, Memphis, Marine City and Vassar PDs and taking administrative roles at Imlay City, Westwood Heights, Merill, Akron-Fairgrove and Vassar schools.
He is due back in court on February 6, 2023 for sentencing.
