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The data you have is the data you have but not necessarily the ground truth. See, for example, San Francisco shoplifting statistics.

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I agree that it may not be 100% accurate, but probably correlated with the truth and directionally accurate. If you discard it, what do you have? Anecdotes? The media narratives?

If data is not representative it's just a metric. Its worse than anecdotes because an anecdote has a lot of information and nuance that can be obtained from it.

But you'd need other data to prove (or at least strongly suggest) that the data isn't representative.

You can't just say "the data COULD be unrepresentative", then just use some random guys anecdotes on the internet as more valid than national statistics.

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