A minor 2013 sidewalk dispute did not end when every charge was dismissed. It became the entry point for a police–mental-health system whose records, labels, and relationships reappeared across later arrests, neighborhood encounters, probation material, and appellate proceedings.
This investigation is based on Kevin Perelman’s firsthand account together with court records, police documents, recordings, photographs, public statements, and published reporting. Its central question is how reports of stalking, provocation, threats, and assaults were repeatedly converted into information about Perelman himself—and how psychiatric language became a shortcut for ignoring the behavior he was reporting.
The Official Version of CAMP
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Case Assessment Management Program—properly abbreviated CAMP, not CAM—was created in 2005 as a component of LAPD’s Mental Evaluation Unit, or MEU.
LAPD describes CAMP as a long-term follow-up program for people who repeatedly come to police attention or whom police consider potentially at elevated risk. CAMP pairs police detectives with psychologists, nurses, and social workers from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Its stated goals are to reduce repeated emergency contacts, connect people with services, and prevent violent encounters.
The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance describes CAMP more directly: it exists to identify, track, and develop individualized long-term intervention strategies for people who frequently come into contact with MEU. Bureau of Justice Assistance
An earlier LAPD outline used the words “identify, monitor, and engage.” It stated that CAMP received approximately 15 to 20 new cases each week and that its “cases never close.” At that rate, roughly 780 to 1,040 new cases could enter the system in a year. CAMP was therefore not a small, occasional crisis program; it was a continuing police–mental-health information system capable of carrying names, reports, family statements, behavioral descriptions, and psychiatric characterizations forward indefinitely.
A 2010 Department of Justice–sponsored study described how a person could enter CAMP without requesting the program or signing an agreement. Referrals could come from LAPD officers, detectives, SMART teams, school police, the Los Angeles Fire Department, or Department of Mental Health personnel. A psychologist could examine police-contact and mental-health information and decide whether the person qualified.
The same study described three levels:
- Active management by police and mental-health personnel.
- Periodic monitoring, including weekly telephone calls or monthly visits by a detective.
- An inactive or filed stage after the person was considered stable.
The study did not identify the subject’s signature as a prerequisite for police tracking or case creation. DOJ/BJA study
CAMP therefore is not simply a voluntary counseling program. It is a police-controlled information and case-management system operating at the intersection of law enforcement, mental-health services, family reports, community complaints, and repeated police contacts.
The Difference Between the Official Mission and Operational Reality
Government programs are ordinarily described through their lawful mission rather than every power their structure makes possible.
The National Security Agency, for example, publicly describes its work in terms of foreign intelligence and national security. That statement alone does not tell the public what data is collected, retained, searched, combined, or disseminated. Those questions require technical records, audits, access logs, court orders, and whistleblower disclosures.
CAMP raises a similar—not identical—oversight issue.
A system capable of identifying, tracking, monitoring, and engaging people over long periods can be used constructively. But it can also produce serious harm if:
- Police accept false reports without verification.
- Personal hostility is translated into a mental-health concern.
- Family members supply unsupported psychiatric labels.
- Community members repeatedly report an identified person.
- Constitutionally protected speech is characterized as instability.
- Dismissed allegations remain in a police database.
- One original accusation is copied into numerous later reports.
- Officers approach later encounters already expecting irrational or dangerous behavior.
- Reactions to harassment are documented while the preceding harassment is omitted.
- Lay opinions become treated as clinical findings.
- Police and clinicians exchange information without meaningful notice to the person concerned.
- Old characterizations are carried into later arrests, probation reports, sentencing, appeals, or CARE Act proceedings.
This can create a self-reinforcing narrative:
A community member makes an allegation. Police document it as a mental-health concern. MEU records it. CAMP sees a history of police and mental-health contacts. Later officers are warned about that history. Their observations are then interpreted through the warning. The resulting report appears to corroborate the original allegation, even though every layer originated from the same unverified source.
A police record is not a diagnosis. Repetition does not transform an allegation into medical evidence. Yet once CAMP assigns a person to continuing case management, later behavior can be interpreted through the label already attached to the file: ordinary disagreement becomes agitation, self-protection becomes paranoia, and resistance to unlawful conduct becomes supposed proof that intervention must continue. The classification can therefore manufacture the behavior it claims merely to observe.
Kevin Perelman Did Not Ask to Join CAMP
Kevin Perelman did not approach LAPD in 2013 requesting mental-health case management, psychological evaluation, or CAMP monitoring.
He was asking police to investigate and stop crimes, threats, provocations, harassment, and community activity that he was reporting against him.
According to Perelman, the plea process reversed those roles. Rather than investigating whether community members and police-connected groups were provoking and falsely reporting him, the justice system inserted CAMP into a diversion arrangement and treated Perelman as the person requiring management.
Perelman’s position is straightforward:
“I did not ask for CAMP. I asked police officers to stop crimes against me.”
The distinction is fundamental. Asking law enforcement for protection is not consent to psychiatric monitoring.
The 2013 Arrest and Five Charges
The 2013 case arose from encounters involving My Brother’s Barbecue and a nearby public sidewalk, but the sign addressed a broader pattern Kevin had experienced at restaurants and other public businesses: repeated instigation, harassment, and attempts to provoke reactions that could be portrayed as obsession, paranoia, violence, or mental illness.
Perelman states that he had previously entered the restaurant, purchased food, paid his bill, and left. He says no one told him that he was prohibited from returning and no lawful trespass warning was served.
On a later date, Perelman sat outside on a public sidewalk with a small sign reading:
“Smeared for Creating Art.”
There was no homeless encampment. The sidewalk was quiet and lightly traveled—not a crowded commercial walkway—and the small sign did not block pedestrian traffic or occupy the restaurant’s private property. A minor sidewalk encounter was nevertheless dramatized into multiple allegations and then expanded into a five-count case, functioning like a Trojan horse into CAMP and MEU involvement.
The newly obtained courthouse minute orders now establish precisely how the case expanded.
At the July 5, 2013 arraignment, the filed complaint contained two misdemeanor counts:
- Count 1: Los Angeles Municipal Code §41.18(d).
- Count 2: Los Angeles Municipal Code §41.18(a).
The minute order identifies Citation No. 02085 but does not reproduce the physical citation or establish which offense Jensen wrote on it. It also lists Deputy Public Defender Anna Brief at the July 5 arraignment. Kevin never retained or knowingly worked with a public defender; he hired Jonathan Franklin immediately. The unexplained Anna Brief entry is therefore a discrepancy in the court record, not part of Kevin’s actual attorney relationship.
On August 19, 2013, Perelman was not present. Jonathan Franklin appeared for him under Penal Code §977. On the prosecution’s motion, Judge Shellie Samuels ordered the complaint amended “by interlineation” to add three more misdemeanor counts:
- Count 3: Penal Code §602(k).
- Count 4: Penal Code §242.
- Count 5: Penal Code §602(k).
Franklin entered not-guilty pleas to those three added counts on Perelman’s behalf. The record therefore confirms that counts 3 through 5 were added later, at the prosecution’s request, while Perelman was absent.
Perelman states that the two trespasses never occurred because he was outside on a public sidewalk and had never been told during his earlier paid visits that he was barred from the restaurant.
He likewise disputes the allegation that he threw a business card at anyone. Even as described by police, the allegation involved a lightweight card rather than an instrument reasonably capable of producing the grave harm later implied by the accumulation of charges.
Perelman says Officer Jensen approached him about leaving the sidewalk. Perelman was prepared to leave but first asked for Jensen’s badge number because the officer appeared unconcerned about the provocations and harassment Perelman was reporting. Jensen responded by issuing the misdemeanor citation. The newly produced records show that the final three allegations were not all placed on that citation at the scene; they were added to the court complaint later on the prosecution’s motion.
LAPD Officer Charles “Sean” Dinse was involved in the 2013 police activity. Perelman identifies this as Dinse’s first visible appearance in a series of later cases and community-policing events involving him.
On September 26, 2013, Perelman entered a no-contest plea to count 1, §41.18(d). The court entered an interim finding of guilt. Counts 2, 3, and 4 were dismissed under Penal Code §1385, while count 5 remained pending.
The court’s case history expressly states:
“THIS IS A CONDITIONAL PLEA (SEE WRITTEN AGREEMENT IN FILE).”
The matter was continued for a March 26, 2014 progress report and a September 26, 2014 probation-and-sentencing hearing.
On September 26, 2014, the court granted Perelman’s motion to withdraw the plea and ordered the plea vacated. Counts 1 and 5 were dismissed under Penal Code §1385. The prosecution moved to dismiss the case “pursuant to the original plea agreement,” the motion was granted, and the proceedings were terminated.
The final legal result was therefore not a surviving conviction. The no-contest plea and interim finding on count 1 were withdrawn and vacated, every count was dismissed, and the entire case was terminated. On December 5, 2014, an arrest-disposition report was transmitted electronically to the California Department of Justice.
Officer Jeffrey Christopher Jensen: Identity, Public Record, and the 2013 Citation
Jeffrey Christopher Jensen is identified in public LAPD-roster, California POST, payroll, and officer-profile compilations as LAPD Serial No. 37340. The public profile reviewed for this reconstruction lists badge No. 19909 as of September 2024, the rank of Police Officer II, a December 13, 2004 hiring date, POST ID B75-W87, and a Topanga Division assignment as recently as April 2025. Assignments and badge numbers can change; the serial number is the more reliable identifier for records requests.
What Public Records Show—and What They Do Not
A broad public search did not uncover an accessible sustained disciplinary finding or individualized Brady disclosure for Jensen. That absence is not a clean bill of health: police complaints, nonsustained allegations, confidential personnel files, settlements, and unindexed matters frequently do not appear in ordinary searches.
A commercial Giglio-Brady profile reports no previously disclosed Brady material for Jensen. The point is not that the website proves misconduct; it shows readers where officer-credibility disclosures may be catalogued and why the underlying agencies—not a commercial index—must answer whether impeachment material exists.
Jensen’s Disputed Role in the 2013 Incident
Perelman identifies Jensen as the officer who approached him during the restaurant and public-sidewalk episode underlying Case No. 3PY03498. Perelman states that he was on a public sidewalk displaying the sign “Smeared for Creating Art,” was prepared to leave, and requested Jensen’s badge or identifying information because Jensen appeared unconcerned about the provocations and harassment Perelman was reporting. According to Perelman, the identification dispute was followed by Jensen issuing misdemeanor Citation No. 02085.
The recovered court record establishes that the filed case began with two municipal-code counts and later expanded, on the prosecution’s motion while Perelman was absent, to include two Penal Code §602(k) trespass counts and one Penal Code §242 battery count. The minute orders do not reproduce the physical citation or establish which offenses Jensen placed on it. The no-contest plea and interim finding were later withdrawn and vacated; all five counts were dismissed under Penal Code §1385 and the proceedings were terminated on September 26, 2014.
The sequence makes Jensen’s conduct central to the story. A dispute on a quiet sidewalk began with a citation and later grew into five counts. The public record does not show that Jensen personally created every added allegation, but it places his police contact at the front of the chain that ultimately led to Franklin’s plea arrangement and CAMP.
Jonathan Franklin and the Unexplained CAMP Provision
Kevin hired private attorney Jonathan Franklin immediately after the case began.
Franklin made a categorical statement that defined the defense he would not provide:
“I won’t say anything bad about a police officer.”
That statement goes to the center of Franklin’s representation. Perelman hired a defense lawyer because police conduct, witness coordination, and community provocation were the defense—not side issues. A lawyer who refuses at the outset to criticize an officer has already removed the client’s central explanation from the case.
Franklin failed to investigate the behavior at the center of the defense:
- Whether Perelman had actually been told to leave the restaurant.
- Whether Perelman was on private property when police arrived.
- Whether the sidewalk was obstructed.
- Whether the business-card allegation occurred.
- Whether restaurant employees supplied false or coordinated statements.
- Whether officers padded a minor sidewalk encounter with unsupported charges.
- Whether community provocations preceded the police contact.
- Whether Dinse and Jensen had prior information or motives affecting their response.
Whether community members intentionally placed Kevin in confrontations he tried to avoid, creating self-defense and witness-impeachment issues.
Whether a private investigator could have documented provocation, motive, malice, police involvement, and the coordinated creation of a misleading paper trail.
During one restaurant encounter, an employee reportedly initiated an unsolicited and cryptic discussion stating that people should not post businesses on Yelp. Perelman had not mentioned Yelp. He understood the statement as either an attempt to provoke a reaction or an indirect warning not to report the restaurant’s treatment of him.
Rather than investigate that context, the plea process introduced CAMP. Franklin represented that the arrangement would work with Kevin to stop the community-harassment groups, then supplied a CAMP contact number connected to psychological evaluation. The promised investigation of the reported actors became assessment of the reporting person. Franklin accepted private payment while refusing to challenge the police conduct that formed the core of his client’s defense.
The newly recovered paperwork makes the nondisclosure issue more concrete. Perelman signed page 3 of the standard PRU-200 misdemeanor plea form. That page records the no-contest plea to count 1 and contains Franklin’s attorney certification. A complete blank PRU-200, Revision 1-2013, confirms that CAMP is not part of the standard four-page form.
The surviving signed PRU-200 does not:
- Mention CAMP.
- Describe CAMP’s police–mental-health purpose.
- Authorize a mental-health evaluation.
- Provide consent for mental-health case management.
- Explain information collection, retention, or disclosure.
- Identify CAMP participation as a condition of the plea.
- State that CAMP officers would substitute for ordinary criminal investigators.
The court’s own records nevertheless describe the disposition as a conditional plea governed by a separate “written agreement in file.” The transcript separately discusses CAMP and records Judge Samuels incorporating an unidentified “second sheet” into the sentencing sheet.
Neither the separate written agreement nor the second sheet appears in the courthouse production. The existing evidence therefore does not establish that Perelman placed his signature on a document expressly agreeing to CAMP. It establishes that he signed a general PRU-200 plea form while a separate conditional agreement existed outside that signed form.
No separate CAMP agreement was disclosed or explained to Kevin and no copy was provided. A later comparison with a complete blank PRU-200 confirmed that the ordinary missing form page contained routine checkboxes and was not the substantive mystery. The unresolved documents are the separate “written agreement in file” and the transcript’s unidentified “second sheet.” If Kevin signed or accepted any additional term, it followed a discussion he says misrepresented CAMP as help against harassment rather than police–mental-health management of him.
The missing transcript and agreement leave the public without answers to basic questions:
- Who first requested CAMP.
- What Franklin told Perelman privately.
- What the prosecutor represented.
- What Judge Shelly Samuels said.
- Whether CAMP was described as voluntary.
- Whether information sharing was explained.
- Whether the arrangement required an evaluation.
- What the signed PRU-200 authorized and what, if anything, was separately authorized by the missing written agreement.
- Whether police assistance was offered as an inducement.
- Whether Perelman’s agreement was knowing and informed.
Franklin’s signed attorney statement is material because it states that counsel reviewed the plea form and any addenda, explained the consequences, discussed the facts and possible defenses, answered the defendant’s questions, and concurred in the plea and waiver. That certification must be reconciled with the missing written agreement, the unidentified second sheet, the absence of CAMP language from the signed PRU-200, and Perelman’s statement that CAMP was not disclosed to him as the substitute for the investigative assistance he requested.
Judge Shelly Samuels and the Missing Context
The March 26, 2014 hearing was a six-month progress review within a twelve-month conditional disposition: the plea was entered September 26, 2013, the progress hearing occurred March 26, 2014, and the plea was withdrawn and every remaining count dismissed September 26, 2014. At the midpoint hearing, Judge Samuels discussed whether Kevin was “doing well,” asked, “Can you do it for 12 months?” and then, “Can you then do it for the rest of your life?” When Kevin asked, “Do I have the civil rights to make that decision?” Samuels answered, “No, you don’t have civil rights to break the law.”
A letter from therapist Karine Echigian was dated March 25, 2014—one day before that progress hearing—and documented sessions that had begun May 13, 2013, before the criminal case was filed. The timing strongly indicates that the letter was prepared or obtained for the court’s progress review. The surviving record does not show whether therapy was a formal condition, an informal expectation, or material Franklin voluntarily presented to show Kevin was “doing well.” Because the separate conditional agreement and unidentified second sheet have not been produced, the record cannot rule out a separately documented therapy requirement.
The transcript still does not identify with precision what “it” meant. The formal March 26 minute order states only that the matter remained on calendar as previously set. It does not identify a treatment condition, CAMP requirement, prohibited conduct, or specific law under discussion.
The exchange is troubling because Perelman’s reference to civil rights was immediately reframed as though he were claiming a right to commit crimes. The later September 26, 2014 order is also critical: the plea was withdrawn and vacated, the remaining counts were dismissed, and the entire case was terminated.
The significance of the exchange is not limited to proving the private meaning of one remark. The court used indefinite language without identifying what Perelman was expected to do for life, what law he was supposedly threatening to violate, or whether “it” included continued CAMP contact or police–mental-health management. When Perelman raised civil rights, the court substituted accusation for clarification.
Within the broader chronology presented here, the exchange supports the inference that the proceeding was being used to obtain submission to an institutional narrative rather than to examine the reported police and community misconduct. Perelman’s interpretation is that the lifelong expectation was continued monitoring, provocation, selective documentation, and psychiatric labeling until authorities obtained the result they wanted. The missing written agreement, unidentified second sheet, CAMP records, and complete transcript are therefore central evidence, not peripheral paperwork.
The unresolved questions include whether:
- “It” referred to completing the twelve-month conditional arrangement.
- The question concerned ordinary compliance with law.
- The question concerned CAMP contact, case management, treatment, or another undisclosed term.
- Perelman was attempting to preserve his right to object to police misconduct and constitutional violations.
- The judge understood CAMP’s actual function.
- The missing written agreement would identify the condition being discussed.
Perelman has now obtained additional minute orders from the courthouse. Those records confirm the conditional plea and complete dismissal, but they do not include the separate “written agreement in file” or the transcript’s unidentified second sheet. The production includes page 1 and a largely blank page labeled page 3 of the September 26, 2013 formal minute order, without an identifiable page 2. The absence of these documents prevents full examination of what was agreed concerning CAMP, mental health, police assistance, and the later civil-rights exchange.
The Assistance Perelman Requested Never Materialized
Perelman says he agreed to diversion because he believed LAPD would provide a legitimate contact who could help address the community harassment and repeated provocations he was reporting.
Instead, he received telephone numbers and what he describes as approximately one meaningful telephone contact. Police did not investigate the larger network he was reporting, did not stop the community activity, and did not provide a detective willing to examine evidence against the reporting parties.
The new courthouse records confirm that the plea was expressly conditional, but the document defining those conditions is missing. This makes the promised assistance more than a collateral misunderstanding: police assistance may have been part of the consideration inducing the plea, while the actual mechanism supplied was CAMP rather than criminal investigation.
The distinction is operationally fundamental. A criminal investigator receives reports, interviews witnesses, preserves evidence, identifies suspects, evaluates probable cause, and investigates whether an offense occurred. CAMP identifies, assesses, monitors, engages, refers, and manages the person selected for police–mental-health attention. Calling both arrangements “police assistance” conceals the difference between investigating crimes reported by Perelman and assessing Perelman himself.
The substitution worked like this:
Perelman requests investigation of crimes against him
↓
Police and counsel redirect the matter into CAMP
↓
Community allegations become information about Perelman
↓
Police do not investigate whether those allegations were fabricated
↓
Mental-health management replaces criminal investigation
The unanswered question is no longer whether the visible PRU-200 signature mentions CAMP; it does not. The unanswered questions are what the missing conditional agreement contained, whether it mentioned CAMP, whether Perelman saw or signed it, and whether it purported to authorize broader police–mental-health information exchange.
The Public Directive to “Deem” Kevin Perelman Mentally Ill
A preserved, annotated screenshot shows a June 14, 2017 Quora response attributed to Jennifer Pilchick Perelman. She is Kevin Perelman’s sister-in-law and the wife of his brother, not an unrelated online commenter. The page identifies her as holding a Juris Doctor from St. Mary’s University School of Law. Federal Election Commission records identify Jennifer Pilchick Perelman as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Florida District 23 during the 2020 election cycle and Florida District 25 during the 2024 cycle.
“Kevin is my brother-in-law and yes he’s mentally ill. He has written off our entire family, thinking we’re all out to get him. My husband hasn’t spoken to his brother in 7 years and my mother-in-law does the best she can to prevent him from being homeless. We are aware of his antics and that he must be deemed ‘the crazy guy’ in Woodland Hills. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that his family can do legally. But there is absolutely no reasoning with him.”
The key words are “must be deemed.” This was not phrased as private concern or a request for treatment. It was a public directive to establish an identity: Kevin must become “the crazy guy” in Woodland Hills. Once that identity is accepted, reports of stalking become “paranoia,” objections become “instability,” and reactions to provocation become supposed proof of the label. The behavior causing the damage disappears; only Kevin’s response remains visible.
Political, Legal, and Network Resources
Jennifer Pilchick Perelman was Kevin’s sister-in-law, an attorney, and later a two-time congressional candidate. Those positions gave her statement more apparent authority and access to legal, political, media, professional, and community networks than an anonymous commenter. Her residence in Florida sharpens the public-interest question: why was a relative across the continent working to establish Kevin’s psychiatric identity in a California neighborhood when she and Kevin had never had a substantive dialogue about the behavior being directed at him? “There is absolutely no reasoning with him” described a conversation that never occurred.
The stated purpose was “help,” but the asserted remedy was loss of credibility, control, property, freedom, or institutionalization. That contradiction creates the motive question at the center of the family narrative: why devote distant legal and social resources to removing someone from ordinary life rather than speak directly with him or investigate what he was reporting?
The Credibility-Neutralization Conspiracy
The evidence is presented as a continuing conspiracy rather than a collection of isolated psychiatric remarks. Its method is to monitor Perelman, provoke or engineer encounters, omit the precipitating conduct, preserve only his reactions, circulate psychiatric labels, and then use those labels to discredit his reports of the conduct directed against him. The label becomes both the weapon and the cover-up. Reports of misconduct are reframed as paranoia; constitutional objections become instability; and reactions to provocation are offered as supposed confirmation of the original label.
Kevin traces the false labeling to early childhood, decades before CAMP existed. In his account, the system did not discover a psychiatric problem; it inherited a family narrative, amplified it through friends and community contacts, and eventually placed it inside police, mental-health, prosecution, probation, and court channels. The people claiming to “help” were simultaneously creating the damage used to justify more intervention.
Claimed Family, Court-Reporting, Property, and Police Hierarchy
The reported hierarchy begins with family monitoring and communications, extends through Jason and Jennifer Pilchick Perelman’s labeling, her father’s connection to the court-reporting business, and court reporter Debbie Wollman’s purchase of property adjoining a wall of Kevin’s residence despite not occupying it. Wollman was a Van Nuys courthouse employee during the period surrounding the 2017 arrests and proceedings. Video records Wollman pressing psychiatric labels and attempting to discourage Kevin from going to the courthouse—a striking intervention when attendance was necessary to defend the criminal cases. These relationships supplied pathways through which family allegations, observations, recordings, and psychiatric labels could move into neighborhood, police, court-reporting, and court networks.
This hierarchy becomes directly relevant to Dinse because his publicly documented neighborhood-policing model connected residents, businesses, homeowners’ associations, Facebook and Nextdoor groups, neighborhood watch participants, and LAPD resources. The question is whether the family-generated label or substantially identical language entered those networks and was then used to solicit monitoring, calls for service, business exclusions, confrontations, welfare checks, arrests, CAMP or MEU referrals, probation narratives, or later court action.
The supplied screenshot directly establishes the public statement and Perelman’s contemporaneous annotations. The remaining links should be established through records rather than assumed from proximity alone. That requires examination of:
- Communications among Perelman’s brother, Jennifer Pilchick Perelman, her father, Debbie Wollman, Dinse, Jensen, LAPD, CAMP or MEU personnel, prosecutors, defense lawyers, court personnel, and neighborhood groups.
- Certified property, assessor, escrow, lease, utility, and occupancy records for the property adjoining Perelman’s residence.
- Court-reporter licensing, employment, assignment, invoice, calendar, transcript-access, and conflict-disclosure records.
- Evidence showing whether audio, video, telephone, internet, location, or other information was collected from or transmitted concerning Perelman’s residence.
- The first appearance of the phrases “mentally ill,” “crazy guy,” “schizophrenia,” “paranoia,” “no reasoning with him,” or equivalent language in family, neighborhood, police, CAMP, MEU, prosecutorial, probation, appellate, or court records.
- Whether any recipient treated Jennifer Pilchick Perelman’s status as a lawyer, family member, or congressional candidate as validation of an otherwise unsupported psychiatric assertion.
Annotated screenshot supplied by Kevin Perelman. The quoted Quora response is the underlying source material; the red annotations state Perelman’s interpretation and identify additional relationships requiring documentary verification.
Charles “Sean” Dinse and Internet-Connected Neighborhood Policing
Dinse is not merely an officer whose name appears in Perelman’s cases.
He is an LAPD Senior Lead Officer assigned to Topanga Division. LAPD currently lists him as the Senior Lead Officer for Basic Car 21A43. LAPD Topanga Division
In a 2014 official LAPD Nextdoor post, Dinse described himself as responsible for monitoring crime trends, “quality of life,” and Neighborhood Watch. He stated that numerous local watch groups used Facebook and other communication systems. He wanted Nextdoor to become his primary communication network while he continued communicating through Facebook. Dinse’s Nextdoor statement
That establishes a deliberate internet-connected police-community structure:
Residents, businesses and HOAs
↕
Neighborhood-watch groups
↕
Facebook and Nextdoor
↕
Senior Lead Officer Dinse
↕
Topanga Division and LAPD resources
The structure does not make every participant a police agent. It does show that Dinse intentionally connected community groups, gathered information from them, and distributed police-related information through online networks.
Crimebusters and Anti-Homeless Facebook Groups
Dinse reportedly participated in two private Facebook groups:
- “Crimebusters of West Hills and Woodland Hills”
- “Homeless Transient Encampments of Our West Valley”
Los Angeles Magazine reported that Dinse regularly used the groups to gather information about encampments and track specific unhoused individuals. Los Angeles Magazine
Knock LA reported that the groups included current and former officers, LAPD volunteers, neighborhood-watch participants, and community members. Members reportedly posted photographs, locations, personal property, allegations, and strategies for removing unhoused people. Some comments advocated violence or destruction of property. Knock LA
L.A. Taco reported that Dinse rejoined one group after LAPD leadership reportedly instructed officers not to participate. L.A. Taco
These reports are relevant because they independently document the type of digitally coordinated police-community activity Perelman says affected him.
Rex Schellenberg’s Federal Civil-Rights Lawsuit
Rex Schellenberg, an elderly unhoused man who slept in or near his vehicle, filed a federal civil-rights case against Dinse and the City of Los Angeles:
Rex Schellenberg v. City of Los Angeles, Sean Dinse, et al. Central District of California Case No. 2:20-cv-01313 Filed February 10, 2020 Cause of action: 42 U.S.C. §1983
The federal docket confirms Dinse was personally named as a defendant. Federal docket
According to the complaint as reported by the Los Angeles Times, Dinse allegedly:
- Shared information about where Schellenberg was staying.
- Encouraged residents to contact police.
- Used resulting calls as a pretext for police intervention.
- Shared sensitive and erroneous personal information.
- Suggested Schellenberg had lost housing because of “drug addiction/mental illness.”
- Targeted Schellenberg’s van for repeated towing.
- Used online groups to monitor Schellenberg’s location and activity.
Schellenberg denied suffering from drug addiction or mental illness beyond the understandable stress and trauma of homelessness. Los Angeles Times
The accessible docket does not establish a final judicial finding against Dinse. The allegations nevertheless provide an independently documented parallel:
- An identified person in public space.
- Community members photographing and reporting him.
- A police officer gathering and circulating information.
- Unsupported mental-illness labeling.
- Repeated enforcement contacts.
- Efforts to remove the person or his property.
- A resulting federal §1983 lawsuit.
Sleeping in a vehicle or being disliked by a neighborhood is not, by itself, proof of criminal conduct or mental illness.
The Bailey Bernard Incident: When the Caller Became the Accused
The Bailey Bernard incident shows the alleged operation in human terms. Perelman says Bernard followed him approximately 600 feet toward his home, screamed at him, demanded, “Is this where you live?” and struck the keys from his hand as Perelman entered the gate to his residential complex. A fight followed. Perelman called 911 and then drove to the police station seeking help.
The case nevertheless cast Perelman as the aggressor. The central evidence should have been straightforward: who followed whom, who initiated contact at the gate, who knocked away the keys, what the 911 recording showed, and what officers were told at the station. Instead, Perelman says the preexisting mental-health narrative allowed police and prosecutors to accept Bernard’s cover story and discount the report of the person who called for help.
Mental illness—real or invented—does not erase a person’s right to report a crime. Yet that is the practical effect Perelman describes: label the reporting person paranoid, treat the opposing account as inherently credible, and use the resulting prosecution as new “proof” that the label was correct.
Perelman’s Three Arrests and Three Criminal Proceedings
Perelman identifies Dinse as connected to three arrests and three criminal proceedings beginning in 2013 and continuing through the 2017 and 2023 matters.
He characterizes the proceedings as constitutionally defective because the courts repeatedly addressed his reactions while excluding or suppressing evidence concerning the preceding assaults, threats, provocations, community activity, police relationships, and allegedly false reports.
Among the events Perelman says were ignored or buried were:
- A woman attempting to attack him with a knife.
- A neighbor’s dog, described as police-trained, severely injuring his leg.
- Reports involving Detectives Angela Stewart and Shapiro that allegedly failed to document or investigate the attacks adequately.
- Repeated community assaults and batteries.
- Police reports that allegedly reversed victim and suspect roles.
- Community members provoking confrontations and then calling police.
- Statements and conduct by HOA members connected with neighborhood-policing networks.
- Dinse appearing at or influencing repeated enforcement encounters.
- Prosecutorial narratives omitting the precipitating conduct.
Perelman also alleges prosecutorial misconduct by prosecutors he identifies as Green T. Phillips and Ingo Orbeli. Among the disputed statements, Perelman says Orbeli claimed that he followed Dinse to Dinse’s home on a court date. Perelman disputes that allegation and considers it part of an effort to portray him as obsessed with or threatening toward the officer.
These allegations require comparison against transcripts, police reports, GPS or location records, body-camera footage, witness statements, and the prosecutors’ evidentiary proffers.
Judge Gregory Dohi and the Denied Pitchess Motion
During the 2023 prosecution, the defense sought personnel information concerning Dinse through a Pitchess motion.
Judge Gregory Dohi denied disclosure concerning Dinse while allowing disclosure concerning Officer Ruiz.
That decision is significant because Dinse had already:
- Been personally named in the Schellenberg federal civil-rights lawsuit.
- Been publicly associated with online groups tracking specific people.
- Been accused of distributing unsupported mental-illness and addiction narratives.
- Participated in internet-connected neighborhood-watch systems.
- Appeared in Perelman’s earlier police encounters.
A denial of a Pitchess request is not proof that no relevant complaints existed. It may mean the court considered the defense showing insufficient, conducted an in-camera review and found nothing discoverable, limited the categories searched, or applied a restrictive relevance determination.
The sealed transcript and in-camera record are necessary to determine:
- What records the custodian brought.
- Which years and complaint categories were searched.
- Whether the Schellenberg litigation was disclosed.
- Whether complaints involving social-media monitoring were considered.
- Whether false reporting, retaliation, unlawful detention, dishonesty, or improper information dissemination were included.
- Whether the court relied on an incomplete custodian declaration.
Engineered Social Contacts and Contaminated Collateral Information
Perelman further identifies people who allegedly entered his social environment, cultivated familiarity, followed or appeared around him in social groups, attempted to elicit statements, and then supplied police-connected participants with psychiatric interpretations of those statements. He maintains that this conduct was designed to create reactions or fragments of conversation that could be removed from context and used to portray him as irrational.
One person Perelman identifies is Dr. Steve Levinson, whom he describes as an elderly, no-longer-practicing gastroenterologist formerly associated with Tarzana Medical Center, where Perelman’s father also worked. Perelman reports that Levinson—approximately his father’s generation—befriended him, appeared with groups in social settings, attempted to draw out statements that could later be characterized as evidence of mental illness, and had professional or social connections capable of carrying those characterizations back to family members, police, or mental-health personnel. Levinson’s exact age, employment history, relationships, communications, and role remain subjects for documentary verification.
This alleged pathway matters because a later evaluator may receive third-party statements, welfare-check narratives, police contacts, or community complaints as supposedly neutral ‘collateral history’ without being told how the encounters were initiated. If a reporting person arranged or facilitated the contact, arrived with police, provoked the disputed conversation, selectively described what occurred, or supplied the psychiatric interpretation afterward, the resulting record would not constitute independent clinical corroboration.
Perelman describes a police visit in which a person involved in initiating or facilitating the contact allegedly appeared with officers, while the resulting narrative nevertheless characterized Perelman as suffering from mental illness. The precise date and report number must be confirmed before the incident is assigned a fixed chronology. The complete source record should identify the caller, accompanying civilians, dispatched officers, pre-arrival communications, statements made at the scene, body-camera footage, CAD comments, reports, database entries, and every later dissemination.
The resulting information pathway can be stated directly:
Engineered or selectively reported social encounter
↓
Police visit, welfare check, complaint, or community report
↓
Lay psychiatric interpretation entered as collateral information
↓
CAMP, MEU, probation, prosecution, or evaluator receives the record
↓
Repetition is presented as independent corroboration
↓
Perelman’s contrary evidence is discounted because of the label
An evaluation based on contaminated or circular source material would reproduce the originating narrative rather than independently establish a diagnosis. The relevant inquiry is therefore not merely whether an evaluator repeated a label, but who supplied each source, what relationship that person had to Perelman’s family or police-connected networks, whether the source participated in producing the encounter, what exculpatory context was omitted, and whether the evaluator was told of those conflicts.
Records necessary to examine this pathway include:
- The original CAD event, 911 or non-emergency call, dispatch audio, body-camera video, station video, and incident reports for each disputed police visit.
- The identities and relationships of callers, accompanying civilians, social-group participants, officers, supervisors, CAMP or MEU personnel, and evaluators.
- Communications involving Levinson, Perelman’s father or other family members, Dinse, Linton, Espinoza, neighborhood groups, police personnel, or mental-health personnel.
- Every referral, field-interview entry, mental-evaluation report, database notation, risk flag, officer-safety notation, collateral-source summary, and dissemination log derived from the encounters.
- The unedited recordings and surrounding statements necessary to determine whether quoted remarks were elicited, truncated, mischaracterized, or stripped of context.
Officers Linton and Espinoza
Topanga Officer Dashanay C. Linton and Officer or Detective Espinoza later supplied unsupported behavioral and psychiatric characterizations.
In a recorded back-room conversation, Linton used words to the effect of:
“He’s a schizoid” or “he’s a schizo.”
Espinoza stated:
“He harasses women.”
Neither statement was a clinical finding. Both were disputed as false and treated Kevin’s identity as settled before the underlying behavior and evidence were examined.
The Watch the Watchers profile supplied by Perelman identifies Dashanay C. Linton as an LAPD Police Officer II assigned to Topanga Division, serial No. 43696, badge No. 24373, with a 2018 hiring year. The profile states that it compiles information from LAPD, California POST, and City payroll records. It does not identify Linton as a CAMP, SMART, or MEU officer or display a substantiated misconduct finding.
Because the profile lists a 2018 hiring year—approximately five years after the 2013 CAMP arrangement—Linton could not have originated that arrangement. Her reported later statements are relevant instead to institutional continuity: whether newer Topanga personnel received, accessed, repeated, or transmitted older CAMP, MEU, neighborhood-watch, family, or police-contact narratives as though they were established facts.
That does not prevent a patrol officer from generating an MEU referral. An ordinary officer can write an incident report, contact the MEU Triage Desk, describe behavior as a mental-health concern, or supply body-camera footage later reviewed by other personnel.
If the statements by Linton and Espinoza were recorded, the complete original recording should be preserved and transcribed. The critical question is whether these statements remained informal remarks or were transmitted into:
- An incident report.
- A Mental Evaluation Incident Report.
- The MEU database.
- CAMP.
- Probation.
- A prosecution file.
- An appellate file.
- A later expert evaluation.
Kevin supplied these statements and related materials to the FBI, Department of Justice, and LAPD Internal Affairs but received no meaningful action. He also reported that Linton retained his driver’s license during the encounter and did not return it, prompting the same oversight complaints. The incident matters because a newly hired patrol officer did not need to originate the 2013 label to repeat it, strengthen it, or place it into a new police record.
Officer Steve A. Norris: The 2017 Dinse/MEU Response and Oscar Sandoval Shooting
The records make Steve A. Norris, LAPD serial No. 37704, directly relevant to the Dinse/CAMP chronology. The reconstruction places Norris in the May 2017 response with Dinse and an MEU officer, then identifies him as one of the officers who fired during the fatal December 2017 shooting of Oscar Sandoval.
Public LAPD-roster and POST compilations identify Steve Anthony Norris as Police Officer III, Topanga Division, serial No. 37704, badge No. 20263, hired in 2005, with POST ID B70-A01. Those identifiers tie the 2017 records to the same Topanga officer.
May 18, 2017: Documented Response With Dinse and MEU
The investigative narrative for Perelman’s May 18, 2017 arrest identifies Officer Campodonico #26541 and Officer Norris #37704 as responding with Sergeant Schneider #32410, Officer Charles Sean Dinse #34920, and MEU Officer Jurisaga #36897. The associated records identify an alleged Penal Code §422(a) criminal-threat arrest, Incident No. 170518002663, Booking No. 4991549, at 21620 Burbank Boulevard; Officer Compton #36582 is identified as the arresting officer.
This establishes an operational connection among Norris, Dinse, and an MEU officer during a response involving Kevin. It places Norris inside the same police–mental-health response whose information pathways are at issue throughout this investigation.
December 30, 2017: Fatal Shooting of Oscar Sandoval
Approximately seven months after Perelman’s May 2017 arrest, Norris was involved in the fatal officer-involved shooting of Oscar Sandoval in Topanga Division. LAPD’s public incident materials identify Police Officer III Steve Norris #37704 as one of four involved officers. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s later review identified Norris, Alvaro Carlos, Mathew Matzkin, and Peter Tulagan as the officers who fired and concluded that the shooting was lawful self-defense and defense of others.
The Sandoval shooting is relevant as documented professional history immediately following Norris’s participation in Kevin’s arrest. Official reviewers concluded that the shooting was lawful self-defense and defense of others. That conclusion does not erase the need to examine the conduct, reports, and information sharing in Kevin’s case; nor does the shooting itself prove a connection beyond the documented Topanga chronology.
The Security-Guard Incidents
Perelman also connects the police-community pattern to private security personnel.
In 2013, he reports that John Paul Noronha, associated with Boys & Associates Security, attacked him from behind near Starbucks, striking him repeatedly in the back of the head. Perelman says police and Starbucks-related personnel minimized or reversed the incident rather than treating him as the assault victim.
In July 2026, Perelman reported another security-guard assault that caused a forehead injury. He considers the later attack part of the same recurring pattern: security personnel and community members initiate aggression, while subsequent reports portray his reactions as evidence of instability.
The Central Public-Interest Issue
The question is larger than whether one officer wrote an inaccurate report or one neighbor made a false complaint.
The cumulative evidence shows why Perelman describes an illegal operation rather than a string of misunderstandings: governmental and private participants repeatedly pursued personal, institutional, political, and reputational agendas under the appearance of law enforcement. Neutral policing investigates both sides, preserves exculpatory context, tests witnesses, and protects constitutional objections. It does not suppress crimes reported by one person, manufacture corroboration through repetition, or use unsupported psychiatric labels to destroy that person’s credibility.
It is whether an internet-connected police-community structure can manufacture the appearance of corroboration:
Private hostility or unsupported labeling
↓
Community posts, photographs and complaints
↓
Senior Lead Officer and neighborhood-watch network
↓
Repeated police contacts and reports
↓
MEU/CAMP tracking or mental-health notation
↓
Prosecutors and judges rely on the accumulated history
↓
The individual’s objections are labeled paranoia
↓
Later reactions become new justification for intervention
The Dinse/Schellenberg litigation demonstrates that this concern is not purely theoretical. Dinse was independently accused in federal court of using online community groups to track an identified person, circulate personal information, introduce unsupported mental-illness speculation, generate police calls, remove the person from public space, and facilitate property seizures.
Perelman maintains that he experienced a broader and longer version of the same mechanism across three arrests and three prosecutions.
His account extends back before CAMP existed. In 1977, LAPD operated a predecessor called the Mental Evaluation Detail. CAMP was not created until 2005, and SMART did not begin until 1993. Any childhood information would have originated in other systems—school records, school police, family communications, juvenile contacts, counseling records, or predecessor police files—before potentially being repeated in later databases.
Perelman states that family members with psychology backgrounds applied psychiatric labels to him from childhood and that friends, teachers, professors, police-connected individuals, and later community groups repeated those labels. The account below identifies Paul Humphrey and Michael Patrick Huntley as important participants in the period before the 2013 CAMP case.
Paul Humphrey and Michael Patrick Huntley: The Pre-2013 Continuity
Paul Humphrey had been Kevin’s friend since Kevin was approximately fourteen years old. That long friendship created unusual access, familiarity, and trust. Humphrey and Michael Patrick Huntley—originally Jason Perelman’s friend—became conduits between Kevin’s social life and the family narrative. Around Kevin’s return from the University of Colorado in approximately 1998, they used that access to manipulate or provoke him and shape how other people perceived and responded to him.
Humphrey later joined LAPD and worked with private-security companies. Kevin describes Humphrey and Huntley using the trust created by a friendship dating to age fourteen, together with police-connected people, security personnel, acquaintances, strangers, social groups, and women, to monitor him, provoke conversations, generate encounters, and circulate misleading accounts. Huntley helped persuade Kevin to return from the University of Colorado as Humphrey was entering LAPD, then answered Kevin’s requests for an explanation with phrases including “world of paranoia,” “have a good life,” and warnings that the judicial system would be used against him. The language did not answer Kevin’s questions; it pre-labeled the questions as mental illness.
The timing is essential. This conduct began years before the 2013 CAMP case. CAMP did not originate the operation; it gave an older family and social narrative an institutional home inside LAPD’s police–mental-health structure. Kevin’s father, Ron Perelman, offered the circular statement “You know what you did” and, when asked to explain, answered that “people can lie.” There was no factual dialogue—only accusation, psychiatric labeling, and threats about what would happen if Kevin continued asking questions.
The claimed pathway was:
Friendship beginning at approximately age fourteen
↓
Trusted access after the University of Colorado
↓
Alleged manipulation, provocation, and use of social contacts
↓
Police, security-company, or community reporting
↓
Narrative potentially carried into later LAPD and CAMP/MEU records
Conclusion
CAMP’s official mission is crisis prevention and service coordination. Its documented operational tools include identification, tracking, monitoring, police–clinician collaboration, information gathering, recurring contact, community engagement, and long-term case retention.
Those capabilities require serious safeguards because an inaccurate narrative can become increasingly authoritative every time it is copied.
The publicly documented Dinse material establishes that:
- Dinse intentionally developed internet-connected neighborhood-watch communications.
- He used Facebook and Nextdoor in his official community-policing role.
- Journalists reported that he tracked specific unhoused people through private groups.
- He publicly applied “drug addiction/mental illness” speculation to Rex Schellenberg.
- Schellenberg personally sued Dinse and the City under 42 U.S.C. §1983.
- The lawsuit alleged that community reporting was used to create pretext for police intervention and removal.
- Dinse was later the subject of a denied Pitchess request in Perelman’s 2023 case.
Kevin’s evidence and firsthand account go substantially further. He describes three arrests, three prosecutions, repeated assaults, security-company activity, and community reporting as connected parts of one operation: provoke or follow him, conceal the initiating behavior, preserve only his reaction, call him mentally ill, and use the label to prevent anyone from examining what happened first.
The newly obtained 2013 court records independently establish several narrower but important facts:
- The case began with two filed municipal-code counts.
- Three additional counts were added later on the prosecution’s motion while Perelman was absent and appeared through Franklin under Penal Code §977.
- The September 26, 2013 disposition was expressly a conditional plea governed by a separate “written agreement in file.”
- The signed PRU-200 does not mention CAMP.
- The transcript discusses CAMP and an unidentified second sheet.
- The courthouse production does not include the written conditional agreement or the second sheet.
- The plea was later withdrawn and vacated.
- Every count was dismissed under Penal Code §1385 and the proceedings were terminated.
The public does not need to accept a psychiatric label or an institutional denial on faith. The story identifies specific people, dates, cases, statements, recordings, police programs, databases, and lawsuits that can be examined. The truth is in the behavior and chronology—not in how many connected people repeated the word “crazy.”
Personal Agendas Disguised as Law and Order
The evidence must be read cumulatively. The later-added charges while Kevin was absent, the conditional plea governed by a separate agreement, the substitution of CAMP for the investigative assistance he requested, Franklin’s refusal to challenge police, the public directive that Kevin “must be deemed” crazy, Dinse’s internet-connected neighborhood operations, and the repeated refusal to investigate reported crimes all point toward one method: protect participants and suppress exposure of misconduct by converting the reporting person into the psychiatric subject.
The allegation becomes the premise, the premise becomes the psychiatric label, and the label becomes the asserted justification for surveillance, exclusion, disbelief, arrest, prosecution, forced treatment, institutionalization, or further intervention. That is not neutral law and order. It is the structure of an illegal operation: coordinate the provocation, erase the initiating behavior, record the reaction, repeat the label, and use the manufactured history to deprive Kevin of credibility and constitutional protection.