They couldn't take it offline. That would be too open of an admission they didn't want you to see it. And they couldn't manipulate the data already in it, because people have already seen it, and that would lead a trail.
I believe, and this article you posted simply confirms that the Biden DOJ changed the way they had localities all around the nation change the way they reported data to the UCR system. It was a voluntary system, but it had benefits to the people submitting data, so they could measure and compare to other localities. But, according to this article, and it is exactly what did happen, under that voluntary reporting:
"...He said that in 2023, 70% of police departments that were reporting under the UCR program stopped reporting under the NIBRS program.
"And keep in mind, those are cities, including L.A., Chicago and New York City, along with 45% of Florida departments, not reporting," he said. "When you have these major cities not reporting, you're going to have a tremendous drop in crimes and, therefore, your statistics and your percentages will drop."
I found out about the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) System back around 2020 (I think) and delved into it for a period of years, slicing and dicing the data, as it allows you to do. (It was Heather MacDonald's article in the WSJ that got me interested in it, or more accurately, Bill Whittle's commentary on her article that got me interested in it.)
They simply suggested to the large crime-ridden areas, who had an extremely vested interest in those UCR generated data elements that people all over the country were accessing and using, to make them go away.
They did that by simply not voluntarily submitting data. And they stopped submitting because they were wholly simpatico with the corrupt Democrat machines at all levels up to and including the White House, and that was that.
They didn't need any suggestions or pressure from the DOJ or White House.
So they just stopped voluntarily submitting from places like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, etc. and...voila. Crime went down. And it was trumpeted over and over again from the execrable Karine Jean-Pierre to the evil Rachel Maddow, with every Democrat in between, that violent crime rates had gone down, and why weren't the ignorant American Citizens giving Biden and the Democrats just credit for it? They had to be evil racists to deny that admission.
And Democrats were unashamedly using the now subverted statistics to "show" crime was being reduced under the Biden regime. Of course, that old adage about "Who are you going to believe? The Government or your own lying eyes?" came fully into play as American citizens saw the rampant crime all around them and knew somone wasn't telling the truth.
In that sense, because in NORMAL, SENSIBLE, THINKING people, they lost confidence in the Media and the Democrat party who were telling them Crime was down, the Economy was booming, and Inflation was being reduced.
People knew their "own lying eyes" weren't deceiving them.
Americans may be too busy, or too lazy, but when someone lies in ways that cannot be ignored, even the busy and lazy ones can reach the correct conclusions, which were destructive to the Democrat hopes of keeping their rat-claws on the levers of power.
Back in 2020, when I began going to the FBI UCR system to obtain data, what I found was shocking and disconcerting to me, and I didn't buy into the woke aspect of this at all, ever. I never believed, ever, that police were randomly hunting down black men and killing them, which is the foundational belief of Black Lives Matter.
Here is the one graphic that lays the groundwork for EVERYTHING that follows:
So just look at that graphic above. Look at it.
Think about it. Imagine a society where only 100 people live. Think of a plane crash, and 100 people survive in some place cut off from the world.
In that secluded society of 100 survivors, SIX people commit nearly HALF the violent crime. The murders. The rapes. Beating people up. Robbing them of their food or belongings. Six people rampaging through this small community. Imagine in a normal world, if you lived in a community and six people commit half the violent crime...what would happen? Likely, those six people would be banished...if they made it out of town. Especially after committing violence against someone who is well known or loved by someone.
What makes this far, FAR more startling is that of the six out of 100 men...it isn't actually all of them. It is only one third of them or TWO people out of that 100 people in that society (according to a study by a very Leftist organization that probably wants that number inflated...so for the sake of balance, let's say it is only ONE out of every six black males who have a felony criminal record.)
To put that in perspective, it could be at the very least, just one black man, or two black men who might be responsible for nearly half the crime. (Note that I make the assumption that in all of this that there is no easy way to tell which one or two men out of six is really murdering, raping, assaulting, or robbing people in this small society. This is where increasing the volume (going from "6 in 100") to ("600 out of 10,000") makes the point. If you are the police, responding, it isn't "John" as it might be in a 100 person society, it becomes looking for someone who looks like "John".
This is important and is likely to be overlooked by some:
In the point I am making, I am not advocating violence against blacks. Far from it.
In the point I am making, I am advocating the application of context to ANY police interactions in light of this "6 out of 100" statistic.
Now imagine in this same scenario, some percentage of the other people have asked you to find out who is causing the issue and "police" it. In that small community, the guy policing it will likely find out pretty quickly who it is and they would be gone.
In a city of 100,000 people, there is some percentage of 6000 men who could be responsible for a crime. But what if you lived in a city like Memphis, Tennessee where the percentage of blacks is 45 percent, meaning 22.5% of the total population are black men. You aren't looking at 6000 men, you are looking at 22,000 men, some portion of them who might be chronic law breakers. In the previous example lets take a quarter of them, and assume that out of that 22,000, 5,500 of them have had a felony conviction of some kind.
And here is the point I am trying to make: with numbers that high accounting for nearly half of all crime, the negative interactions with the police are going to be far, far more numerous as a percentage of the total than the non-black population. And if there were really an epidemic of black men being killed by the police due to an inbred racism baked into Law Enforcement, wouldn't the numbers below be far, FAR higher, both as a total, and as a percentage as the graphics show below from federal crime statistics (Statistics by Heather MacDonald of the WSJ, and presentation of her data are screen captures of Bill Whittle from his "Black Lives Matter Kills People" video.)
In all of this, it unfairly lumps in many black men who work, raise families, pay taxes, and go to church with men who are the scum of society. Unfortunately, that is what happens with police, since they are called on to interact negatively with a small percentage of the population, since they don't have the luxury of being able to see into a man's soul. They have to deal with what is laid on the table. The Left may call that discrimination which is what they do, but they always characterize it without context...often deliberately.