How Many Will be Getting This Game Now?

If I had to guess, the reason it's not in the game is simply because Ghost couldn't figure out (or couldn't be ASSED to figure out) why their cop AI was so bad in 2015.

The cop AI in 2015 (along with the very wonky drifting mechanics) was the worst part about that game. It couldn't follow you very well and it only ever did so at a low speed (if you went over 80 or so you'd start gaining distance even if you needed them to chase you).

So, if I had to take a stab at it, their only real solution to the problem was to remove the open-world aspect of police chases so they could focus the cop AI on a single route. Then they could make them as aggressive as they wanted as the AI wouldn't be stuck making decisions about how to catch up to the player character. The police did this right in other NFS games, sure, but for whatever reason they didn't make it work in 2015 and didn't want to delve into why for this game.

Sugarcoat it all you want but the lack of police chases in free-roam is indicative of something more than "we wanted an action-focused experience" (or whatever it was they said).