Federal police training research faces scrutiny over cited evidence

An evidentiary audit of federally funded law enforcement studies alleges selective citations and undisclosed ties to forthcoming instructional products, prompting calls for journal corrections.

When law enforcement agencies redesign firearms training, they rely on academic research to determine how officers practice split-second decisions under stress. The accuracy of those underlying citations determines whether tactical protocols protect officers and the public or rest on misconstrued science. In modern criminal justice, evidence-based training practices depend on researchers reporting the findings of prior studies faithfully. When citations mischaracterize what earlier experiments demonstrated, training programs risk adopting policies based on distorted evidence.

In October 2026, training consultancy Building Shooters Technology LLC published an evidentiary audit examining research authored by J. Pete Blair, executive director and grant director for the ALERRT Center at Texas State University.¹ The ALERRT Center, an organization focused on active shooter response and law enforcement training, has received more than $136 million in taxpayer funding.¹ The research reviewed by the audit was funded in whole or in part by the U.S. Department of Justice under grant award 15JCOPS-24-GK-02506-PASS.¹

What did the audit uncover across the cited literature?

The evidentiary audit identified a multi-year pattern of substantive misrepresentation across literature citations used to support claims about police firearms instruction.¹ According to the findings released by Building Shooters Technology LLC, the citations contained selective citation, excluded contradictory results, and made claims that effectively reversed both the conduct and findings of cited studies.¹ The disputed citations appeared across audio podcasts, ALERRT-sponsored postings on the newsletter platform Substack, a paper deposited on the criminal justice repository CrimRxiv, and an April 2026 peer-reviewed article in the Taylor & Francis journal Evidence Base.¹

The review also questioned commercial disclosures within federally funded scholarship. According to Building Shooters Technology LLC, the April 2026 Evidence Base article appeared to advocate for training products that Blair publicly stated were actively being developed by the ALERRT Center, while the article explicitly disclaimed any potential conflicts of interest.¹ Dustin Salomon, the founder of Building Shooters Technology LLC, argued that substantial public investment requires rigorous scholarly standards. “Regardless of intent, academic credentials and millions in taxpayer funding should not reduce academic rigor, especially in topics that have a direct impact on public safety. If anything, they ought to increase it,” Salomon said in the announcement.¹

How did the author and the journal address the allegations?

Blair committed to submitting a formal journal corrigendum, a published notice correcting errors in scholarly literature, for several citations in Evidence Base, while disputing that other cited statements were misleading.¹ When Building Shooters Technology LLC presented its findings, Blair also disputed that promoting forthcoming training products developed by the publishing organization equated to a disclosable conflict of interest in a government-funded, peer-reviewed journal article.¹ Blair indicated that he would verify the disclosure guidelines directly with the journal editor.¹

The editor of Evidence Base defended the peer-review process that approved the publication while declining to share correspondence. In response to inquiries from Building Shooters Technology LLC regarding citation accuracy, corrigendum submissions, and commercial disclosures, the editor confirmed that the journal was in contact with Blair regarding the matter.¹ The editor stated that communication with authors would not be disclosed to third parties.¹ “This piece underwent rigorous peer review by two independent, anonymous referees, in accordance with the journal’s peer review policy,” the editor said.¹

What questions remain open for police training programs?

Neither the journal Evidence Base nor the criminal justice repository CrimRxiv has posted a formal correction or a revised manuscript.¹ Building Shooters Technology LLC initiated its inquiry after receiving questions from readers and clients regarding Blair’s publications and claims.¹ The company consults with armed workforces to restructure qualification programs and helped New York State rewrite its police recruit firearms training curriculum.¹

The audit represents an external evaluation conducted by a commercial training developer, differing from a formal institutional investigation or university inquiry. The findings reflect the specific publications and reference lists examined by Building Shooters Technology LLC, which do not encompass the entire body of research produced across the ALERRT Center. In addition, textual audits assess citation fidelity in academic prose without measuring how firearms training curricula affect officer decision-making during live field encounters. Because the journal has not yet published an official corrigendum, the broader scientific community has not evaluated which specific citations require formal revision.

The dispute reflects an ongoing debate over how empirical research guides law enforcement instruction and qualification standards. When public safety agencies invest tax revenue into instructional programs, curriculum developers depend on academic literature to validate training methodologies. Ensuring citation fidelity and transparent conflict disclosures allows trainers to distinguish between established empirical findings and promotional claims. Until formal corrections appear in the scholarly record, instructors and agencies must evaluate whether published recommendations align with the original source studies they cite.

What this rests on

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1. 1 BS Building Shooters Technology LLC Press release · einpresswire.com · 12 Oct 2026 Pattern of Misrepresentation Discovered in DOJ Funded Research See the source