Of course, the whole thing takes place in the entirety of Paradise City, which means that you'll be driving every which way in order to both pick up the gold (which is nicely highlighted on your map) and get it back to your scoring spot. What makes things a little tricky, however, is that gold isn't light, so if you're carrying the loot, your car runs more slowly than normal, practically requiring that your team works together to form a nice blockade for the carrier.
Takedowns are indeed a bit part of this, and you'll be using them to snatch the gold from the carrier or to stop your opponents from getting to your teammate with the stash. If you nail a Takedown on someone with the gold, you'll gain possession of it. Should you crash on your own, the gold will be up for grabs in the middle of the street.
Options for the mode are aplenty as you can enable or disable traffic and boost and specify what cars people choose to play with. As no Burnout add-on would be complete without new vehicles to drive, you'll find a huge set of police cars at your disposal. These things run the gamut from baseline rides to supercars to SUVs to hot rods, so you won't have a hard time picking something that you like. And of course, the siren is enabled for all of them, which you can trigger by clicking down on the left analog stick.
A lot of the excitement that I got with my time in Cops & Robbers is pretty much identical to what you'll get with classic games of capture the flag. If you have the gold and are making a dash for the drop-off spot, you get that feeling of the enemy breathing down your neck and it's just a matter of distance versus time, you being able to make it to the scoring zone before the enemy gets to you and takes you out.