An interception scheme run through unofficial informants
Officers identify businesses holding cash or precious metals, then take the cash or the goods.
De Beer's evidence, per Eyewitness News, is that certain JMPD officers work with unofficial informants - sources who are not registered and whose handling is not recorded - to find businesses trading in goods including precious metals or moving large sums of cash. The officers then intercept either the cash or the goods for criminal purposes, using the appearance of lawful police action. She described it as a pattern across multiple cases rather than a single incident. It is structurally the same allegation the anonymous JMPD inspector known as Witness K put to the commission on 23 June 2026 about the Killarney precious-stones theft, where a falsified seizure form was used to make a robbery look like a seizure. The allegation is untested.
The reach beyond the metro police
On her evidence the arrangements involve SAPS and Hawks members and the buyers and sellers.
The single most consequential sentence of Day 173, per Eyewitness News, was de Beer's description of who is involved: 'So the conduct is not confined to JMPD based on the cases. It typically involved collaboration between JMPD officers, SAPS members, Hawks members, and the ultimate buyer and the sellers.' If it stands up, it places municipal policing inside the same network this commission has been examining at national level for more than a year, rather than alongside it. No court has determined any of it, and no person has been convicted on the basis of it.
Superintendent Phineas Manyama and the areas the patrols leave
A decorated TRU superintendent, named as keeping crime patrols out of certain parts of the city.
Per Eyewitness News, de Beer identified Superintendent Phineas Manyama of the Tactical Response Unit as an implicated officer who used departmental resources for his own benefit and prevented crime patrols from operating in parts of Johannesburg. Her account of the mechanism: 'There are certain areas where TRU members, as soon as they go into those areas, especially where the crime hotspots or the syndicates operate, as soon as JMPD TRU members enter the parameters of that specific area, they are being phoned and told, What are you doing there? Get out.' EWN's reporter on the day recorded that Manyama was a celebrated officer within the department and that he allegedly made life extremely difficult for JMPD members who did not follow his instruction to stand down. Manyama retired in April 2026, at the point at which de Beer's unit was preparing disciplinary charges against him. Manyama has not responded publicly, has been charged with nothing, and is presumed innocent.
A pursuit called off
TRU members chasing a black Ford Ranger were allegedly ordered to abandon it.
Per Bulletin, de Beer's statement described TRU officers pursuing a black Ford Ranger and calling for SAPS and air-wing assistance, and then being instructed by Manyama to abandon the pursuit. On her account the officers were afterwards confronted and told to return their vehicles and firearms. The incident has not been dated in the public reporting and the allegation is untested; Manyama has not answered it.
Thirty-eight investigators, and nowhere to send a criminal case
A unit of 38 covering 3,000 to 4,000 members, with no formal referral route to the SAPS or the Hawks.
Per The Citizen, de Beer told the commission her internal affairs unit has 38 employees for a department of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 members, and that there is no formal mechanism for referring a criminal case out of the JMPD to the SAPS or the Hawks. She described superiors intervening in her unit's work - 'The superintendent within that unit would give an instruction to say stand down' - and the position that leaves her investigators in: 'Now you sit down, and you listen because nothing gets done about the seriousness of this misconduct.' Of records she had needed, she said: 'We struggled to get that information.' Commissioner Advocate Sesi Baloyi SC put the jurisdictional problem to her directly - 'It is not your job. You are not detectives. It is not your job to investigate a docket for criminal prosecution' - and named the consequence: 'The idea that it dies in the JMPD and nobody ever comes to know about it. It is not comforting at all.' This is an account of institutional capacity rather than an allegation against any individual.
A conviction, and an alleged R550,000 offer to undo it
A JMPD officer convicted of a R1.5m robbery, and an alleged approach to a Hawks officer.
Per Sowetan and Daily Maverick, de Beer's evidence covered a case that has already reached a verdict: a JMPD officer named Mphahlele was convicted of robbing a businessperson of R1.5 million in 2023 under the guise of a police operation and is awaiting sentencing. Her untested allegation around it is that Inspector Emma Phakoane, still employed by the department, offered a Hawks officer R550,000 to secure his release, with Chief Superintendent Tintswalo Rikhotso said to have taken part. She also described three TRU members arrested for allegedly robbing a Zimbabwean national of money meant for a family funeral, reported as R80,000 by Daily Maverick and R85,000 by The Citizen, whose charges were withdrawn after alleged interference with the complainant and the docket. Phakoane and Rikhotso have answered nothing publicly, neither has been convicted of anything, and both are presumed innocent.
What happens to the investigators
Internal affairs officers are threatened, and grievances are used against them.
De Beer told the commission that internal affairs investigators are intimidated, and described the procedural route officers use against them, per Eyewitness News: 'The very same officers that we investigate and we charge would be the very same officers that will turn around and open up grievances in order to get away from whatever subject they are being investigated against. A certain number of our investigating officers were targeted, threatened.' She also described complainants who are afraid of the officers they are complaining about. Taken together the evidence describes an internal control function outmatched by the conduct it exists to control. This is an institutional account rather than an allegation against any named person.