Filed and Forgotten: The Weaponization of Incident Reports

 

There is a growing push toward zero-tolerance policies for violence in schools, but we rarely stop to ask what’s really happening beneath the surface. Violence is not the root problem. It’s a symptom. A symptom of an education system that was never built for inclusion. A symptom of policies, practices, and mindsets that continue to exclude, punish, and pathologize the most vulnerable students.

Now, some staff are weaponizing this system. I've watched as violent incidents are framed and documented in ways that position the student as the sole problem. There is rarely any inquiry into what preceded the incident. Nobody stops to ask what role the adults played, what accommodations were denied, what trauma was triggered, or what systemic failures were ignored. We don’t ask why. We just document in order to remove. To send home. Suspend. Make invisible.

Every school district has a form, a process. Incident reports, filed into oblivion. Internal violence reports that go nowhere unless someone wants to use them. The union cites them to call for an end to “workplace violence,” but rarely do we see the same urgency to dismantle the policies that caused the crisis in the first place. No one is calling for an end to ableism. No one is calling out the systemic violence of exclusion, restraint, and dehumanization.

Let me be clear: I do not condone violence. But when a system pushes children to the edge, when it isolates, shames, and strips them of dignity, it breaks something in them. And when people are broken long enough, they fight back. Not because they’re dangerous, but because they’ve been harmed.

Somewhere, not in your child’s official file, a report might exist. One that paints them as a risk, a liability, a threat. I stopped filling them out. They serve no meaningful purpose unless you’re trying to justify exclusion, trigger a VTRA, or quietly push a student out of school. That’s the real risk assessment. Not the child, but the system itself.

What if the threat isn’t the student? What if the threat is the system? The policies. The silence. The denial. The culture that refuses to look inward and is more concerned with legal liability than care.

I’ve heard teachers say students would be better off at home playing video games. That they’re a burden. That they don’t belong at school.

I’ve walked into schools with a pit in my stomach. I’ve felt ashamed to be part of a system that excludes children under the guise of “safety.” I’ve advocated for families whose lives were upended by exclusion—single parents forced to stop working, children left without support, labeled and discarded. And when I raised concerns, I was told, “I’ve seen hundreds of kids like him. They all turn out fine.”

Do they? Or do they disappear quietly so we don’t have to ask hard questions?

The system doesn’t ask what led up to the incident. It doesn’t debrief. It doesn’t reflect. And then we wonder why youth mental health is in crisis.

If we’re serious about safety, inclusion, and equity, we need to start by telling the truth.

Parents are often entirely left out of the incident reporting process. You won’t find a copy of the report in your child’s file. You won’t be informed how your child was portrayed on this form. How their actions were documented as violent when perhaps they were protective. How when you back a child into a corner, they come out fighting. How when the walls of the classroom don’t honor your identity or promote autonomy and belonging, it makes them feel trapped, so they bolt. How, when a teacher grabs their most prized possession and confiscates it until school is over, they grab it back so quickly that it rips her necklace off.

If your child is excluded from school due to a violent incident, ask to see the incident report. Ask your child about the event in a way that creates space for honesty and safety. Be curious, not blaming. Don’t assume the school’s version tells the full story. Why are we constantly leaving students out of these conversations? Their voice, their perspective, and their rights matter. They must be central to how these situations are handled.

Request that your child’s account be formally documented alongside the staff version. This is not just good practice; it may trigger the school’s duty to inquire. Under human rights law, the duty to inquire requires schools to consider whether a student’s behavior may be linked to a disability. Schools have a legal obligation to explore whether accommodations are required before taking disciplinary action. Unfortunately, this step is often ignored.

Respect goes both ways. But that part of the story never makes it onto the incident report. What gets highlighted is the behavior, not the context, not the conditions, and certainly not the adult’s role in what happened.

The system is not neutral. And sometimes, the threat isn’t the child, it’s what we’ve built around them.