OK. Reality check here. You're bent outta shape over a stomped and abandoned, rusting UJB belonging to a convict....
Thinking about stealing it. Because that's what you're doing actually. You are no more liberating it than we and the Brits liberated the natives in Africa from their lifestyle and placed them into slavery.
If you do steal it, it will be under the watchful eyes of the homeless and who knows how many others.
I think there are more better things to be spending your time on, than to visit a guy in jail. Attend an auction if the cops take the bike and it doesn't first disappear. Move on, there are more bikes in the world awaiting us, with less baggage.
This is not a pet, a living thing being abused which requires our intervention...rescue.
I picked your quote because it was the last but I have a question for all those who see this as stealing.
Does that mean if I abandon any garbage on the street and put a lock on it, is it no longer garbage? If I lock a mattress to a street sign, nobody can touch it? If I fire bomb my car and leave the burned out hulk in the street WITHOUT the keys, I have the right to keep it there in perpetuity?
I'd go to the cops and report an eyesore and a potential hazard to the community (I could trip over it and sue the city). Then I would ask the details, timing, possession, etc. The original owner, IMO, has absolutely no rights for abandoning garbage.