I am really curious about the dogs too. One reason is because of the incident the day earlier,where the family got a 'ticket' for having the dogs running free. I may be wrong, but in my experience, in order to get the authorities upset about dogs running free, it is usually bigger dogs that get attention.
If your two pugs are running around nobody usually cares too much. But if your shepherds or pit bulls are out, someone is going to call and complain. imo
I agree with what you say there...people usually react to small dogs with concern, and big dogs with fear. And what you wrote made me wonder... what if...what if the very reason the dogs got out the day or so before was due to someone casing the house/doing a dry run ahead of time and letting the dogs out?