In interacting with veteran colleagues, police recruits must come to terms with their low hierarchical status and soon learn to conform to prevalent formal and informal police norms; the need for peer acceptance is paramount with all police personnel. Since they interact with predominantly Anglo-Saxon superiors, minority recruits tend to lose their ethnic identity and conform to white standards of behavior. Police recruits must also come to terms with five possible dimensions of their professional authority: exploitative power (i.e., the threat of naked force and violence), manipulative power (conditioning citizens to obey the law by citations, fines, and jail sentences), competitive power (competition among police officers), and integrative power (a cooperative effort between police and community). In shaping their self-concept, police officers are influenced by the following conditions: (1) the concept of how they are being judged by others, (2) the ability to judge oneself against a set of norms that state proper behavior; and (3) the perception of oneself in relation to other people (both police and nonpolice). Because of their identity problems, minority recruits frequently need counseling to help them form their self-concept. Counselors working with minority recruits should promote their clients' personal and intellectual growth and assume responsibility for their psychological welfare. The article includes 43 reference notes.