El objetivo de esta investigacion es caracterizar el fenomeno de la policia y del derecho de policia, dentro del nuevo paradigma constitucional del Estado social y constitucional de derecho. Inicia con una aproximacion a la multiplicidad de sentidos que adquiere el termino policia, para concluir que se trata de una expresion multivoca pero con sentidos determinados y precisos dentro del ordenamiento juridico colombiano. Estudia sus origenes y propone desde la Teoria Constitucional que tal multiplicidad de sentidos obedece a la tributacion de diferentes tradiciones historicas y politicas, en el proceso de conformacion de los Estados nacion y particulariza la situacion en los paises del llamado Tercer Mundo como mantenimiento del orden publico interno. En un tercer momento, hace un analisis juridico de como se inserta el derecho de policia en el paradigma de respeto a los derechos humanos y en el ordenamiento juridico colombiano, brindando elementos conceptuales generales conforme la jurisprudencia de la Corte Constitucional. Finalmente, la investigacion enuncia que la constitucionalizacion del derecho de policia se da en dos vias, la primera, como limite a la restriccion de derechos fundamentales individuales, y la segunda, como promocion de derechos fundamentales colectivos. / Abstract. The main purpose of this research is to present the police legal concept as well as the law of police within the new constitutional framework acting as a reference of action of the rule of law and the constitutional state. It starts with a comprehensive approach to the multiplicity of meanings of the term police in order to conclude that it is a multivalent expression with different connotations but with a specific value within the Colombian legal system. It proposes from the constitutional theory that such multiplicity of senses is due to particular historic and political traditions, as a component of the process of establishment of the nation state and its realization in the third world countries and the maintenance of the internal public order, explaining the different dynamics and characteristics that it acquires in our contexts. Lastly, it does a legal analysis which explains the current insertion of the law of police in the context of the respect of human rights and its adoption within the Colombian legal order, offering the general conceptual elements in conformity with the jurisprudence of the Colombian constitutional court. It concludes that the constitutionalization of the law of police is concreted in two different ways. Firstly, as a boundary for the restriction of the fundamental individual rights and secondly as a manner of promotion of the collective fundamental rights. All things considered, the reader will not find legal analysis in strict sense nor he will find a specific research about the police procedures, on the contrary he will find an explicative study of constitutional character.