The institution was created by the Colombian National Police with the main function of instructing recruits to become officers, enlisted, agents, detectives and other technical and administrative services. It was formally restructured by the presidential Decree 343 of 21 February 1940 during the mandate of president Eduardo Santos in an effort to shape the institution into a more efficient entity with the support of Decree 776 of 14 April which set the dotation needed per personnel, unified and assigned more objective functions to the police force. Decree 343 also set Luis Andrés Gómez as the first director of the institution, who assigned the staff personnel for it, as also established in the Decree 77610. One of his main purposes was to achieve a status of university for the Colombian policemen.