By the vagueness of what police are saying about the bust leads me to believe that they were just lucky, a roving patrol stumbled upon them or maybe a stakeout. Also the bust was more than likely as a result of good police work, such as viewing video from before the wires were cut. The police did have 6 months to work on these mutts MO, and all the hype about them being HI-TECH probably came about after the interview with the suspects.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the police love this type of story to get out so then they can make a case for encryption, and I totally agree that stories like this could result in more use of encryption or MDT's, but I have to say that any surveillance units watching these guys were probably not using their own radio system. I wouldn't! So it is kinda moot when you use a common scanner or app for counter surveillance. There are much better ways, and it would take a larger team.
My opinion about depts going encryption is that they shouldn't do it, it puts a wall up between the public and the police. A far better law would be making it a felony to use a radio device, cellphone, scanner or app in the commission of a crime, and a not VTL violation, with a mandatory 2 years added to their sentence, and not concurrantly.
I love when the police say they found burglar tools in their homes, anything even a kitchen fork can be considered burglar tools.