The Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy (NILEA) was formed 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 their 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 next twenty years that number grew to forty-seven (47) police departments covering a seven (7) county radius. The name of the organization also changed. By 1990, it was known as the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Training Center and when basic recruit training was introduced, it was renamed to the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

Today, NILEA provides in-service training programs to over one thousand two hundred (1,200) police officers, offering up to one (100) hundred in-service training classes and three fifteen (15)- week basic recruit academy classes annually.