The Northern Indiana Law Enforcement Academy (NILEA) was created on September 15th, 1982. Originally named the Lake Suburban Public Safety Training Council, Inc., the organization's inception was in response to a legislative mandate that all police officers in Indiana have a minimum of sixteen (16) hours of in-service training to maintain certification as law enforcement officers.
The four charter member agencies of the Public Safety Training Council were Highland, Schererville, Crown Point, and St. John. Over the following decades, membership grew to as many as over sixty-four (64) police departments covering a twelve (12) county radius. The name of the organization also changed, and by 1990 it was known as the Northern Indiana Law Enforcement Training Center (NILETC). When the LETB authorized NILETC to deliver basic recruit training, it was renamed to the Northern Indiana Law Enforcement Academy (NILEA). Today, NILEA provides in-service training programs to over twenty-five hundred (2,500) police officers, offering in-service training classes and two sixteen (16) week basic recruit academy classes annually.