It’s a criminal harassment tactic of deceiving an emergency service (via such means as hoaxing an emergency services dispatcher) into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person's address. This is triggered by false reporting of a serious law enforcement emergency, such as a bomb threat, murder, hostage situation, or a false report of a mental health emergency, such as reporting that a person is allegedly suicidal or homicidal and may or may not be armed, among other things.
It’s called “swatting” and it’s a good way to get someone injured or killed in a hail of bullets.
Clara Sorrenti, a popular Twitch streamer who is known as "Keffals" on the platform, said on August 5 he woke up to see a police officer pointing a gun at him. Describing what happened in a YouTube video on August 9, Sorrenti claimed someone sent an email impersonating him to everyone in the city council of London, Ontario, stating that he had an illegal firearm, had killed his mother, and was planning on shooting every cisgender person at City Hall.
To be clear, I am not going to use feminine pronouns on him. I have consistently made it clear that you can’t change sex and that no amount of surgery, hormones or pronouns alters that reality.
That being said, the swatting of Sorrenti is wrong and I condemn this in the strongest terms possible.
Again, this is a good way to get someone injured or killed. Consider…
On January 15, 2015, in Sentinel, Oklahoma, Washita County, dispatchers received 911 calls from someone who identified himself as Dallas Horton, who told dispatchers he had placed a bomb in a local preschool. Washita County Sheriff's Deputies and Sentinel Police Chief Louis Ross made forced entry into Horton's residence. Ross, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, was shot several times by Horton. Further investigation revealed that the calls did not originate from the home, and led Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents to believe Horton was unaware that it was law enforcement officers making entry. James Edward Holly confessed to investigators that he made the calls with two "nonfunctioning" phones because he was angry with Horton. Ross, who was shot multiple times in the chest and arm, was injured, but was treated for his wounds, and released from a local hospital.
On December 28, 2017, a Wichita police officer shot a civilian named Andrew Finch in his Kansas home in a swatting incident. Andrew Finch later died at a hospital. Based on a series of screenshotted Twitter posts, the Wichita Eagle suggests that Finch was the unintended victim of the swatting after two Call of Duty: WWII players on the same team got into a heated argument about a $1.50 (USD) bet. On December 29, 2017, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested 25-year-old serial swatter Tyler Raj Barriss, known online as "SWAuTistic" and on Xbox Live as "GoredTutor36," in connection with the incident. In 2018, Barriss was indicted by a federal grand jury along with two others involved in the incident. According to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister, the hoax charge carries a maximum punishment of life in federal prison while other charges carry sentences of up to 20 years. On March 29, 2019, Barriss was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. The gamer that recruited Barriss in the bet pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to prison for 15 months as well as a two-year ban on playing video games.
On April 27, 2020, Mark Herring, a sixty-year-old man from Bethpage, Tennessee, died of a heart attack after police responded to false reports of a woman being killed at his home. The swatting was organized in an attempt to force the man to give up his Twitter handle "@tennessee". Shane Sonderman was sentenced to five years in prison for the swatting, and ordered to pay a $250,000 USD fine. A minor in the United Kingdom was also involved, but he cannot be extradited or identified due to being underage.
While I condemn the swatting of Keffals and any other trans activists, I would be remiss not pointing out that I have said repeatedly these attacks on the trans community are a direct result of their inability to clean house - that’s to say they’ll let anyone who says they’re trans into their group.
And that’s the problem.
Trans Rights Activists have clearly demonstrated their proclivity for violence which is why I believe whoever did this to Keffals knew exactly what to say to provoke an overwhelming police response.
I’m sure the police have seen this evidence before which is why they were so moved to show up at Keffals’ doorstep with guns drawn - they weren’t about to take any chances.
Especially when Keffals has said this in past:
Again, I don’t support what was done to Keffals but clearly this kind of rhetoric doesn’t help and only serves to perpetuate the stereotype that TRAs are quick to violence.