What's the Crime Here?

Imagine this scenario: You're a cop. I know, I know. You're a cop, and into the station walks a concerned parent of a Mountlake Terrace High School student who is holding photographs of her daughter being sexually assaulted by two other students. "This is despicable," you say and the woman agrees. "This is a travesty," you say and the parent once again concurs. "Who would treat an American flag that way and where would they get one so large," you say and the parent stares at you blankly. "That's the flag!" your partner says over your shoulder, "That's the flag that was stolen from Jack Long Park!" And the parent stares at you blankly.

This scene, lovingly dramatized for you by Seattlest, played out in Mountlake Terrace yesterday and a 17-year-old suspect was arrested on burglary charges for the theft of the 15-by-12-foot flag that had disappeared in October. The Seattle Times account goes on:

Police think the boy scaled a 140-foot water tower inside a gated portion of Jack Long Park, yanked the flag off a 40-foot pole atop the tower and had been "using it as a bedsheet and sleeping on it," Sgt. Pete Caw said.

The article strangely seems to pay much more attention to the flag/bedsheet than the sexual assault being committed under it. Seattlest thinks that's pretty weird. The groping suspects apparently took the photographs themselves to post on the internets. Seattlest thinks that's pretty stupid, but what about this story isn't?