Address pandas 2.0 deprecation warnings in FBIHateCrimePublications

[niveditasing]

Summary: Replaced deprecated .fillna(method='ffill') with the direct .ffill() method in the preprocessing scripts for Table 13 and Table 14 & added golden files.

Why this change was made

1. Pandas 2.0+ Compatibility & Deprecation Cleanup
   In modern versions of Pandas (2.0.0 and above), calling .fillna() with the method argument (e.g., method='ffill') is deprecated and raises a FutureWarning (or errors in newer releases). The recommended and idiomatic pandas way to forward-fill missing values is calling .ffill() directly.
2. Added Goldens files

Test Results: https://storage.mtls.cloud.google.com/datcom-import-test/scripts/fbi/hate_crime/FBIHateCrimePublications/2026_07_28T04_41_11_827936_07_00/input0/validation/validation_output.csv

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request updates the preprocessing scripts for FBI hate crime tables 13 and 14 by replacing the deprecated pandas fillna(method='ffill') calls with the modern .ffill() method. I have no feedback to provide as the changes are correct and align with modern pandas best practices.

[rohitkumarbhagat]

[P2] Validation Config — Missing Date Freshness Validation

• File: scripts/fbi/hate_crime/validation_config.json
• Finding: validation_config.json sets up DELETED_RECORDS_PERCENT and GOLDENS_CHECK for all tables, but omits date freshness validation.
• Impact: Golden summary reports intentionally exclude MaxDate so that data refreshes do not fail when new observation dates are ingested. However, if a future refresh silently fails to ingest new publication years or regresses, the golden checks alone will still pass.
• Recommendation: Add a SQL_VALIDATOR date freshness check to validation_config.json (e.g. verifying that MaxDate is at least 2023 or within allowable lag):

  {
    "rule_id": "check_max_date_freshness",
    "description": "Verifies latest observation year is within 3 years of current date",
    "validator": "SQL_VALIDATOR",
    "params": {
      "query": "SELECT MAX(CAST(SUBSTRING(CAST(MaxDate AS VARCHAR), 1, 4) AS INT)) AS max_year FROM stats",
      "condition": "max_year >= (EXTRACT(YEAR FROM CURRENT_DATE) - 3)"
    }
  }

[rohitkumarbhagat]

I feel this check would be helpful. pls check again. Other golden checks wont ensure latest date data is present.