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For thieves, it doesn’t get much easier than this a full parking lot without a soul in sight.

As we first told you last week Metro is trying to suppress a crime surge at its Park & Ride lots.

“It’s just tax money. Who cares?,” said Metro critic Tom Bazan.

But after our report, Bazan said Metro is overpaying for a system that won’t prevent anything.

“They were doing a better job of preventing crime when they were spending less. So it’s not a matter of how much money you throw at the problem it’s a matter of how effective you are,” Bazan said.

That may be true. Metro put guards in booths and only paid $1 million a year and crime was low.

But when money got tight, the transit agency got rid of the guards and crime surged more than 30 percent.

So Metro is now spending $16 million to install cameras and a public address system, gates that can be closed by remote control and emergency call stations.

But no guards.

“One security guard cannot see everything on a Park & Ride lot,” said Chief Tom Lambert, Metro Police Chief.

There are now four Park and Ride lots that have the technology and 17 others are getting it.

“We had security guards on lots for years and we still had incidents out there. Have we had them to the degree we saw last year? No. But we also saw a lot of other things happening last year. Our population grew. Our ridership grew,” said Lambert.

So did crime. The best way to reduce it is what the debate is all about.