Our Neighbors Stole Our Porch Chair And We Want It Back

My bf (who I stay with a lot) lives near Purdue in Indiana. At the start of this past school year we met his neighbors who complained about someone stealing their porch chair. They’ve since bike locked their chairs to their porch to keep them from being stolen. One day we noticed one of our four porch chairs was missing. We assumed it was drunk shenanigans and that some drunk person took it during the night. That kind of stuff is very typical for our campus. You’ll see bikes in trees, flipped die tables, and anything from porches being stolen. A few days later we noticed the chair was on his next door neighbors porch. My bf went to retrieve it but it was already locked to the porch. We have since noticed they have a big collection of mismatched chairs in their backyard so I believe stealing chairs has become their thing. We would try and talk to them about it but the irony of them complaining about a chair of there’s going missing and then stealing our chair and also the audacity to steal from your next door neighbors is wild and really says something about them. Those actions, along with some other stuff they’ve done, makes us not want to try and work it out with. Since we also don’t want to get cops involved because it’s not worth all that trouble we’ve thought of some alternative methods of getting it back. First we could just cut the lock and take it back but that risks destruction of property, especially because they would 100% know it’s us. To avoid it being destruction of property we could cut the lock and leave a new one in its place. Would cutting the lock really be that big of a deal legally other than it being a possible civil case (which is unlikely from a house of college students)? If it is a risky move would replacing the lock resolve any crimes or even be worth it considering how pricy bike locks can be?