According to steam charts, APB was originally averaging 4k players and is now averaging about 1100 players. Pop did spike when LO took over and I believe that it will happen when new content is added, but the game would need to be fixed (UE 3.5) before this can happen
Removing the threats from districts may be a good idea to try and unify the playerbase, provided that a tutorial district is preserved to prevent Greens on Golds.
On that note, most people dethreat, so the threat system is partially redundant anyway.