TYC Superintendent Arrested For Destroying Evidence: Why Didn’t Kimbrough Order All Records Siezed?

Since we took yesterday off from blogging, we have a tremendous amount of stuff to report today on the scandal at the Texas Youth Commission.

First off, we have the first arrest of many in the TYC sage: a San Antonio TYC emmployee has been arrested for allegedly destroying documents:

Because of the investigation, Texas Rangers specifically told the woman and other TYC employees not to destroy any records. However, Rangers Thursday found evidence that 48-year-old Sylvia Machado had been shredding documents.

Machado is a 9-year veteran of TYC and superintendent of the Ayers House, a halfway house in the 5800 block of Culebra that houses two dozen juvenile offenders.

Officials say with an ongoing investigation into the TYC, now is not the time to be tampering with physical evidence.

How could this have happened? Special Master Jay Kimbrough, a Perry crony, told the world earlier this week that one of the primary goals of the 7o-plus law enforcement officers being sent to the TYC facilities was to safeguard documents? It doesn’t seem like they are doing a very good job at safeguarding documents if, as soon as the investigators walk out the door, someone turns on a shredder and pulls a Fawn Hall.
More:

“It is very suspicious. You usually don’t worry about destroying something if you didn’t have anything to hide. That’s human nature. But we don’t know, and I’m not making any allegations against them, other than we’re dealing with a situation that arose the other day,” Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed said.

Texas Rangers arrested Machado for tampering with physical evidence, a third-degree felony, Friday. She is being held on a $20,000 bond, and if convicted, faces 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

Suspicious? Hell yes. But what’s more suspicious is why in the Hell Kimbrough hasn’t simply ordered the officers to show up with U-Hauls and simply start carting away the evidence.

This is a “matter routine” in most such investigations: the law enforcement folks show up and the next thing you see on the news are file cabinets and boxes and computers being hauled away.

Why didn’t Jay Kimbrough order the records siezed? It makes no sense to leave them in the facilities when corruption is as widespread as it is.

How many more documents will be destroyed?

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