To Catch a Predator

Behind the scenes.

On October 22, 2007, the Warren County District Attorney's Office announced that 29 men were arrested in an internet child sex sting conducted by local police in conjunction with Perverted Justice and Dateline NBC. Footage of this sting operation aired in an installment of the To Catch a Predator series on December 28, 2007. This is the twelfth investigation covered by Dateline and host Chris Hansen since the series began in 2004. Perverted Justice partnered with the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation as well as the Attorney General's office in three separate sting operations in three cities in Kentucky, but Dateline NBC was only involved in the Bowling Green portion of the operation. The female decoy used by Dateline in this operation was the same decoy they had used in the New Jersey operation though her hairstyle was different in order to avoid the possibility of being recognized by one of the predators who had watched the New Jersey investigation. Only seven men showed up to the house during Dateline's portion of the investigation, a sharp decline from previous Dateline investigations. One man arrested claimed to be a police officer in Indiana, although he was only a cadet and was fired before he graduated from the police academy. Kentucky police attempted to taser him when he ran, screaming, back into the house as police confronted him. Another arrestee was a man with cerebral palsy who walked with a cane and admitted to chatting inappropriately with underage girls before. All men arrested face 5–10 years in prison if convicted.