I've never been to Oxford but I'm guessing it has a lower density of bicycles per square meter than Amsterdam. Presumably it's easier for stolen bikes to 'blend in' in Amsterdam?
Which also explains why the 2K electric bike is taken somewhere else – if you tried to sell it in the same town there's higher chances the owners find out about it (like from a Facebook posting) and involve the police. Understanding that the police don't work super well across district lines seems to have solved this problem for the thieves here (and created problems for everyone else instead).
There are two universities, and countless EFL schools and other schools; and students visiting Oxford are strongly discouraged from bringing cars. The universities have about 60,000 students between them (in a town whose permanent population is 140,000).
So Oxford has a LOT of bikes.
Bikes are everywhere in Oxford, probably due to the Uni