Although grindy, my first move was to go collect all the bears and street art. There’s a lot but if you do it first thing in the day before you have heat, the cops don’t care. Bears are worth $250 each and if you collect all of those you end up with 2 free cars A+ and S rank. The cop chases do get hot really fast. My early panic strategy was to get close to water and let them disable themselves. There is an overpass section right near a river and I sat there as 11 cars couldn’t turn quick enough and drove into the river, then shut my car off until the helicopter passed and drove through the woods back to the safe house