Can User Reputation be Directly Altered/Manipulated? User able to report content direct to abuse workflow

This may be a bit of an X/Y Problem.

Here's the originating problem:

Members of the Verint Community come along and report a user or content as abusive. Although the platform is set to require more than one person to report content as abusive to enter the abuse workflow, this content that the user reports goes straight to the sin bin.

This is a problem because:

1. Moderators don't regularly check the process queue for content, assuming it'll come into review first

2. The member(s) that can do this, very easily do so accidentally because of the way menus are presented on Verint.

I don't want all members to be able to report content as though they're an admin and have that content go straight to the abuse queue. If the person is a registered user or member of a group, I need that reported content to come up for review first.

I'm under the impression this capability is related to the user's reputation, and that's why they're able to report one piece of content, and it goes straight to the abuse queue. Here's a snapshot of the user's sample score from user reputation:

There doesn't appear to be any way to control or change this user reputation behaviour directly, it looks like a total black box.