Data were obtained from a 1-year field study of the police handling of juveniles in two adjoining suburban police departments. Discussions with the police, school personnel, and local political leaders revealed the assumption that town youths would follow in their parents' footsteps. Consequently, the police department had adopted a service style of policing. Juvenile activities were extensively monitored using field interrogation and observation (FIO) cards. FIO cards contained the name, birthdate, and address of each juvenile; the time and place of the observation or interrogation; the reason for the observation; and names of the person's companions. The use of FIO cards enabled police officers to extend their control over juvenile behavior, to measure the extent of deviance in the juvenile population, and to compile statistics on juvenile activities. Differences between FIO's and incident or arrest reports are examined, as well as investigative versus intelligence uses of FIO reports and the issue of whether using FIO cards violates juvenile rights. The author concludes that FIO cards give the police a great deal of power, especially since the cards collect information on incidents that do not necessarily involve legal violations, and that informal systems such as FIO cards allow police departments to "manage" their crime rates in a way that makes official statistics seem lower. 36 references, 7 footnotes, and 3 tables