Originally Posted by neil

It's probably the landlord, though I suspect that even it was, the police couldn't do anything, since removing abandoned bike locks from his property is property maintenance, not theft. Weird that he wouldn't just say so, though...probably doesn't want you trying to get compensation or something from him.

If not him, then probably another regular user of the bike rack who's pissed about there always being locks attached. I find just leaving your crap behind you to be pretty inconsiderate behaviour. I don't know about this rack specifically, but I have encountered racks that are made much harder to connect to securely (with just a u-lock) because there's a pile of locks there.