Clara ‘Keffals’ Sorrenti was arrested and claims to have faced transphobia by the local police, despite being the victim of swatting.
Swatting remains a very dangerous problem with popular streamers. Essentially a more vicious form of pranking, people will make hoax calls to the police, directing them to a streamer’s house under false pretences.
This has resulted in the likes of and even innocent people being . Or, in the most recent swatting incident, it gets the target of the swatting arrested.
Canadian transgender streamer Clara ‘Keffals’ Sorrenti started out streaming video games in 2021, before pivoting more towards discussing .
Earlier this week, police showed up at her door as somebody had sent emails threatening violence to every council member in the London, Ontario region, as well as claims that she possessed a firearm and had already Ki**ed her own mother.
Most swatting incidents very rarely see the target arrested (since they’re technically the victim), but Sorrenti wound up being taken into custody, and both her and her partners’ phones and computers were confiscated.
Even after being released and her mother being found alive and well, the police didn’t return her equipment, meaning she was unable to do her job and had to spend thousands of dollars to replace it all.
As of today, the police have officially deemed her innocent and, in a statement by police chief Steve Williams, concluded that she didn’t send any of the emails, so she’s got all her stuff back.
While the person responsible for the swatting hasn’t been identified, Sorrenti believes that it’s a hate crime and she was targeted for being a high-profile transgender activist.
What’s more, she alleges that she suffered transphobia at the hands of the police, as evidenced by the fact that she was arrested over what she argues was a very blatant swatting attempt.
Apparently, the supposed emails were full of errors, including using her deadname, and the police obviously never found any firearms during their search of her house.
That said, she remained a suspect until today and she claims that the officers she interacted with deadnamed her multiple times. They also used her deadname in the police report and on her evidence bags.
‘The way that I was treated by the police really showed me they know nothing about transgender people or issues,’ she told . ‘Instead of the police helping me, it victimised for it.’
Chief Williams’ statement denies that any of the officers deadnamed her while she was in the holding cells. However, he has apologised to her for the evidence bags being labelled with her deadname, saying that the police were simply never notified that she had changed her name so her file in their system hadn’t been updated to reflect that.
Sorrenti has set up a to raise money to move house and to recoup her losses, with any additional funds to go towards legal fees. At the time of writing, she’s raised $85,640 out of her $90,000 goal.
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