And here we arrive to the point of the original post. Value of the bike vs. Risk involved in retrieving it. A POS bike with a moderately good lock is far less likely to get stolen than a Canyon 7K e-bike with a lock that you can saw through in 3-4 minutes with a Li-ion battery powered angle grinder.
I bought an e-bike worth a long penny and an u-lock to match, and the bike got stolen from the front of a busy shopping centre by guys in a van using portable angle grinders. Conveniently the security cameras were not in operation due to a system malfunction. I was inside the centre for about 10 minutes, so a real bummer. Thankfully I had also taken an anti-theft insurance that covered the out of pocket cost of my insurance, so mostly this was an annoyance, but also a valuable lesson.
This was my logic as well. Bike got taken off from the front of a busy shopping centre, and nobody had bothered to get involved.