Criminal justice scholars and practitioners have sought to identify strategies to increase and improve diversity in police agencies since the 1960s Civil Rights era. Moreover, the difficulties recruiting racial and ethnic minority police officers indicated there is distrust and fear of the police, which includes police culture/practices that negatively affect recruiting. Therefore, this study aimed to identify, using a generic qualitative approach, the dominant barriers and provide insights into what other barriers exist to recruiting racial and ethnic minority police officers in challenging environments. The population for this study consisted of 12 racial and ethnic minority college students, a mixture of male and female students, at a local community college in Texas, and they were interviewed utilizing semistructured, open-ended interview questions and a questionnaire. The thematic data analysis approach found four themes and nine subthemes among the 12 participants. These themes included (a) participants understand the challenging environments in policing, (b) controversial police events diminish racial and ethnic minority interest in pursuing policing careers, (c) police agencies should recruit on college campuses, and (d) participants perceived distrust and fear of the police as dominant barriers to recruiting racial and ethnic minorities. The results revealed distrust and fear of the police were the dominant barriers to recruiting racial and ethnic minorities. Although the participants supported the police, the perceptions of police culture/practices, along with aggressive tactics displayed on social media and mainstream platforms, hinder racial and ethnic minorities from pursuing careers in policing. Future studies should evaluate the relationship between distrust and fear of the police and social media platforms. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]