The text begins with some analytical reflections about how to understand the State and the played by the Armed Forces and the Police as the institutions with a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force. It then examines the difficult and contradictory experience of what has transpired in Colombia, at different points in history, in the construction of the National Police force, underlining the lack of differentiation between the of the Armed Forces and that of the Police: the militarization of the Police and the policing role of the Military. To a considerable degree, this characteristic is historically tied to the repeated presence of political violence in Colombia. The analysis then examines the Uribe government's democratic security policy. It concludes with a series of reflections about how to consider a civil Police force in post-conflict Colombia -with some indispensable conceptual guidelines for understanding this- identifying some progress that has been made in this direction.