There is also the effect of decriminalization and depolicing which I did not see well addressed in the article. There are parts of the US where local government has the social leaning or at least their key donors have the social leaning to take a permissive attitude towards activity that was previously criminal. Effectively this makes activity like buying and selling drugs and shoplifting legal and, thereby, meaningless to report.

If anything the article may more likely be an indicator of the delta between crime as-is and as-reported or a cautionary tale of decision-driven-data