AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

Last year, the FBI reversed the change and revived the previously-retired data collection system. They also gave agencies that didn’t submit data for 2021 a chance to submit their data retrospectively. Nearly 2,500 agencies took the FBI’s offer and submitted crime data through the old system for 2022, but it’s unclear how many did for 2021.

I don't know that this is as monumental as you or the article is making it sound. It's not like they're the first ones to ever use a regression model ffs. Nor is it the first time they've conducted the NCVS, which always records unreported crimes. The long term trends are what's most indicative of, well, long term crime rates, which have continued to decrease. Even the article states that the year over year data is just being used by politicians to push whichever narrative about crime they want. Even if there were some issue with one year of data, their point is that the pandemic created irregular results anyway. Individual agencies have also never been forced to submit their data. Iirc they get some kind of block grant or something in return for giving their crime data to the federal government. Which means that there are likely agencies missing from any given year.

Or you could also just go to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and use the data explorer instead of trusting an article from a nonprofit justice initiative.