In Latin America, research on police forces began to gain significant ground within various fields of the social sciences following the return to democracy, particularly in Southern Cone countries shaped by civic-military dictatorships towards the end of the 1980s. Topics such as police violence, police reforms and the analysis of policing from a normative perspective became part of the academic and research agendas in the region, especially in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Since then, these studies have increased and gradually consolidated. However, in other parts of Latin America that were not affected by military dictatorships but rather by other forms of violence and illegal dynamics, social studies on the police took a different course. Civil wars or internal armed conflicts of varying duration have left a significant mark on the security forces, particularly the police institution. Despite this, the consolidation and research lines of social studies of the police did not develop in the same way or with the same intensity as in other countries in the region. This chapter seeks to explore how social studies of the police emerged in El Salvador and Colombia, the reasons behind the opacity of police institutions within the social sciences and, above all, the emergence of police studies conducted by these institutions themselves in countries affected by war and armed conflicts.