Asha Sawhney furrowed her eyebrows and jutted out her chin. The 9-year-old glared at a detective-sergeant as he snapped her picture.

“They’re mug shots,” University Police Officer Latori Bartelle explained. “You’re not supposed to smile.”

By the end of the hour, about 30 girls would receive their own mug shots to take home and share proudly, a souvenir of Thursday’s Take Our Daughters to Work Day, in its 11th year at Northwestern.

“My dad’s going to say, ‘Now you got arrested for stealing something!'” Isidora Coric, 7, said as she clutched her mug shot. Its caption read, “I was framed.”

UP gave tours of the station, 1819 Hinman Ave., to the 7- to 13-year-old girls. Most were daughters of NU employees, or students at Chicago-area elementary schools. Officers fielded questions about handcuffs, squad cars and police interrogations.

As the girls sat in the “lock-up,” a sparsely-furnished basement room, one asked if the officers ever tortured anyone.

“We treat everyone like human beings,” Officer Haydee Martinez said. But when some suspects are out of control, pepper spray is a good way to subdue them, she said.

Each girl got a turn behind the wheel of a UP squad car and a chance to scare imaginary criminals with the car’s PA system and sirens.

“Stop the car! This is the police!” one girl shouted, her voice booming out of the car’s speakers.

For some, power and public recognition made life in the blue uniform an attractive option.

“You get to carry guns and be in the newspapers if you do something good,” said Ariel Jona, a third-grader at Baker Demonstration School in Evanston.

— Beth Murtagh