40% of U.S. police departments haven't sent in any crime stats for 2021. "New, improved" reporting system

The story below is from a left-leaning source:

Last year the FBI retired its nearly century-old national crime data collection program and switched to a new improved system, called the "National Incident-Based Reporting System" (NIBRS).

Right away you can see it's better than the old "crime data collection" program because it replaces the word "crime" with "incident-based reporting."  See, for many Americans the word "crime" has negative connotations.  

Now here's the surprise: Even though the FBI announced the transition years ago and the federal government has given police departments hundreds of millions of dollars to help them switch to the new, improved system, almost 7,000 of the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies have not sent any crime data --sorry, "incident data" to the voluntary program for 2021.

Cities failing to report included many high-crime cities, like New York City, L.A. and Philly.

Cities that didn't submit any crime data largely blamed their non-compliance on "technical issues" and staffing shortages.  And duh virus.  So what did those high-crime Democrat-ruled cities DO with all those millions of federal dollars they were paid to help them switch, eh?

Oh, you know, citizen.  They have huge budgets so it's really, really hard to know where a grant for a measly few million ended up, eh?  You know how it is, citizen.

What this means is, for the only year biden and Dem policies have been in effect, no one will have any official, nationwide crime stats to discuss before the mid-term elections.

So if you're a Republican and want to point out that violent crime in big Dem-ruled cities skyrocketed in 2021, that's...unfortunate.  Cuz all those thousands of surveillance-camera captures of smash-and-grab thefts, or people pushing innocent, unsuspecting people in front of subway trains?  Nothing but anecdotes, citizen.  Don' prove nuttin'.

But if you're a Democrat, agreeing with the regime's claim that crime is way WAY down since Dear Leader was installed, all you have to do is...cite the regime's numbers.  The Media won't contradict you, so you can say anything you like.

Is this a great country or what?

BTW, Axios leans left.

Source.