A School Resource Officer on Charging “Good Kids” for Vape Carts: “Do I Feel Bad? Yes.”
The first time I caught a kid with a cart, I didn’t write the report. It was a Tuesday afternoon before the final bell. I was walking through the east hallway when I caught a smell that wasn’t just vape smoke—it was that sweet, almost burnt, grape flavor you only get from a THC cartridge. A junior I’ll call Marcus was leaning against the lockers, waiting for his friend, his backpack at his feet. I asked him to open it. Inside was a little clear bag with two vape pens, both capped. The oil was amber and syrup-thick.
Marcus was a good kid. Track team, honor roll, worked at the Dollar General on weekends. His hands were shaking before I even said anything. When I asked if it was his, he said, “I’m just holding it for a friend.” I believed him. I also knew that didn’t matter legally.
I called his mom instead of charging him that day. She came to school in her work uniform—she was a school bus aide—and she cried in the parking lot before she even got to the office. I gave Marcus a long talk, the kind that hurts more than a ticket because you can see the kid actually hears it. He left with his mom and the backpack. No charge.
I don’t know if that was the right call. I’ve never known.
Last month, at a parent meeting after school, a woman asked me the question that I guess a lot of people have wanted to ask. She said, “Do you ever feel bad for giving decent kids felonies for minor drug charges? Like carts?” Her son was a sophomore who had been caught in the bathroom with a vape pen. He was suspended, and the school resource officer—my partner that day—had written a charge. She said the word “felony” like she had been saying it over and over in her head.
I gave her the only honest answer I have. “Yes. I feel bad. And I wrote the charge anyway.”
The “yes” is human. Any officer who says they don’t feel bad is lying or has been on the job too long. When a kid starts crying in the principal’s office, or when the mother shows up with tears still wet, you feel it. You feel it even when you know they made a mistake. You feel it because a felony charge can follow a 15-year-old into adulthood—into college applications, job applications, housing, the military. That’s a heavy thing to hand to somebody whose brain isn’t even fully developed yet.
But the “and I wrote the charge anyway” is the part people don’t want to hear.
There’s a reason for it, and it’s not just about following the law. It’s about the word “decent.” The woman said her son was a decent kid, and I could tell she meant it. He did well in English. He had a girlfriend. He apologized when he got caught. All of that is true, and none of it changes what was in his pocket.
Here’s the uncomfortable reality: the law doesn’t have a line for “decent kid.” In the state where I work, a THC cartridge is treated differently from marijuana bud. The oil is concentrated, so a half-gram cart can be a felony when the same amount of plant material would be a misdemeanor. I don’t make that law. I don’t even like it. But I’m the one who has to stand in front of a parent and explain that a mistake made in a school bathroom is now a criminal record.
And there is another reason I don’t just wave it away. If I wave it for one kid, I have to wave it for all of them. That sounds like fairness, but it’s not simple. What makes a kid “decent” in the eyes of a school officer? Good grades? Cooperating with me? Having a parent who shows up? The kid whose parents don’t show up, or who already has a name in the system, or who is Black or brown and has already been stopped twice for the same hallway ritual—I feel worse for that kid. But I don’t have a word like “decent” for them yet. A reward system that helps kids who already know how to act in front of authority doesn’t really help kids. It just cleans things up for the ones we find easy to forgive.
I know that’s not a comfortable thing to say, especially from a school resource officer. People want the answer to be clear: either feel bad and don’t charge kids, or feel nothing and charge everyone. The truth is that I feel bad for every kid, and I still have to make a choice every time.
Sometimes there’s room to choose. I have discretion. A lot of officers do, more than people think. The hard part is exercising it without making things worse. If I call a parent instead of writing a charge, that kid might get the help they need, or they might learn that the only consequence of getting caught is a very uncomfortable conversation. I don’t always know. The kid I let walk might become a kid who hides it better next time. The kid I charged might get into a diversion program and never touch a cart again. There is no way to run the experiment twice.
That’s why the practical advice I give parents isn’t “make sure your kid doesn’t get caught.” It’s a few smaller, uglier choices.
First, know what a cart is. Don’t assume it’s like vape juice or tobacco. In many states, it’s a concentrated drug product, and the legal stakes are much higher than a joint. I’ve watched parents argue with officers because they thought a cart was just “a vape thing.” That argument doesn’t work. It makes a parent look like they don’t know the difference, and it makes a kid think they don’t need to know either.
Second, talk to your kid about holding things. Not “don’t do drugs.” That’s the talk everybody gives, and it’s too easy to ignore. Instead, say: “If anyone asks you to hold a backpack, a jacket, a phone, a vape—anything—the answer is no. Say no right there, in the hallway, before they pass it to you.” Most “decent kids” who end up with a felony are not the ones smoking in the bathroom. They’re the ones holding the stuff for a friend. A kid who says “it’s not mine” is still holding it. That’s the part so many parents miss.
Third, if your kid is caught, push for diversion early. Ask about first-offender programs, teen court, or a diversion agreement. These exist in many districts, but they work much better when a kid stops defending and starts owning it. I know it feels wrong to make a kid admit to something they’re scared of, but “I had it and I understand it was wrong” carries real weight with officers and prosecutors. “That’s not mine” doesn’t. It just makes everyone dig in.
I have also seen schools try to change the system. Some districts have replaced traditional school resource officers with “student relations officers” or “school climate officers.” They wear plain clothes, they do restorative circles, they try to handle things in-house. I respect that. But a student relations officer still has a badge, or at least a close relationship with the police department. The title doesn’t change state law. It changes the atmosphere, which matters, but it doesn’t change what happens when a cart hits a table.
At the end of each year, I sit down with the principal and the social worker and review the discipline referrals. We talk about which kids we should have handled ourselves, which ones slipped through, which ones got the help they needed. There are always names I wish I hadn’t charged. There are also names I wish I had charged earlier. That’s the split-open truth of this work: both things are true, and I have to hold them at the same time.
I still think about Marcus and his mother in the parking lot. He graduated two years later. I don’t know if he got better or just got better at not getting caught. I don’t know if I helped him or let him slide. The mom who asked me the question at the meeting—I don’t know if my answer made her feel better or worse. I told her the truth, which was that her son’s charge would stay on his record, but that it didn’t have to be the end. A lot of kids carry it for a few years and then spend the rest of their lives hoping it doesn’t show up when they apply for a job.
That’s the part I feel bad about. Not the moment I write the charge. The long silence after, when nobody knows whether the kid is going to be okay. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for the good ones. I feel bad for the ones who never had a chance to be called good. And I still do my job. I don’t think that contradiction ever goes away. I think it’s what keeps me honest.
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