I suspect this is being brought up in an attempt to demonize and pump up this guy's hacking skills to reduce the embarrassment of targeted companies but also of

I suspect this is being brought up in an attempt to demonize and pump up this guy's hacking skills to reduce the embarrassment of targeted companies but also of police. He presumably was in police custody at the time and they were meant to deny him internet access, but weren't competent enough to understand that these devices can be rooted & turned into a general-purpose computer. Therefore, rather than admitting this (obvious) mistake, they're trying to make it sound like installing a chrooted Linux environment or RDP/SSH client on such a device is some advanced hacking skill.