London police cleared of wrongdoing in 'swatting' case

Clara Sorrenti collects computer equipment released by London Police after an alleged incident of swatting (Daryl Newcombe/CTV News London)

An internal review of a swatting incident involving transgender activist Clara Sorrenti, has cleared the London police officers involved.

This past August, Sorrenti was awakened by heavily armed officers from the London police service at her downtown residence.

They were responding to e-mailed threats against city hall from a person claiming to be Sorrenti.

She claimed police used her dead name repeatedly while she was detained in custody and wrote it on her property that was seized.

Dead name refers to the birth name of a transgender person who has legally changed it.

As a result, Chief Steve Williams launched an internal probe of the incident and opened a criminal investigation into who sent the threatening emails.

So far no arrests have been made

In a recently released report, Williams said, “Reports that the individual was repeatedly 'dead named' by officers are not accurate as confirmed by audio and video recordings capturing the period in custody... I have reviewed the recordings and found our officers were polite, respectful and professional. It is recognized however that a property bag in which the individual's personal items were stored was labelled with a previous name which was generated from our internal records management system”

The chief goes on to say, “As a result, we have implemented a process to inform officers on what to do when they are interacting with an individual who has legally changed their name and how to reflect this change in our records management system. Additionally, we reviewed our procedures and processes to determine the impact they could have on transgendered individuals.”