Purpose and Scope
This memorandum organizes publicly available information concerning LAPD Senior Lead Officer Charles “Sean” Dinse, Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Karine T. Philips, the LAPD Topanga Division, the private Facebook groups commonly known as “Crimebusters of West Hills and Woodland Hills” and “Homeless Transient Encampments of our West Valley,” and their potential relevance to Kevin Perelman’s 2017 Van Nuys prosecution, identified by Perelman as case 7VW04099.
The objective is not to state unproved criminal allegations as established fact. Rather, it is to identify what the public record actually proves; what established news organizations, civil-rights organizations, litigants, and activists have alleged; what Kevin Perelman reports occurred to him; where those bodies of evidence overlap; and what documents would be necessary to determine whether government officials or community participants improperly coordinated against him.
That evidentiary distinction is critical. The strongest material does not require a theory of a massive or worldwide conspiracy. There is already a documented local factual record showing that Topanga police personnel participated in private neighborhood Facebook groups that tracked particular people, circulated personal information, discussed homelessness and mental illness, and generated law-enforcement activity. There is also a contemporaneous 2018 civil-rights complaint that specifically identifies “Mr. Perelman,” his automobile and his license plate.
I. Principal Individuals
A. Charles “Sean” Dinse
Sean Dinse has served as an LAPD Senior Lead Officer associated with the Topanga Community Police Station and Woodland Hills. LAPD’s current Topanga station directory continues to identify Officer Sean Dinse as a Senior Lead Officer.
The Senior Lead Officer position is particularly relevant because it is built around community policing, neighborhood contacts, identifying recurring local problems, working with neighborhood-watch organizations, and transmitting information between the community and police.
Dinse’s publicly expressed policing philosophy emphasized neighborhood-watch participation. Reporting concerning his 2019 campaign for Los Angeles City Council described him as advocating the prevention and deterrence of crime through Neighborhood Watch. Los Angeles Magazine subsequently reported that he regularly used the West Valley Facebook groups to obtain information about homeless encampments and to track specific homeless individuals.
Dinse also publicly expressed a strong connection between homelessness, irrational behavior, substance abuse and mental illness. In February 2018 West Hills Neighborhood Council minutes, Dinse reportedly stated that many homeless people officers encountered were homeless because of mental illness or drug use.
During his 2019 City Council campaign, Dinse told the Los Angeles Times that supportive housing by itself was insufficient and said that authorities had to stabilize irrational behavior caused by drug addiction and potential mental illness before a person could successfully accept or retain housing.
That statement is not misconduct by itself. It is nevertheless relevant because it establishes Dinse’s publicly expressed conceptual framework: certain individuals encountered in public spaces were viewed through a combined crime / nuisance / addiction / mental-illness framework rather than solely as people requiring housing assistance.
Dinse’s public record is not exclusively punitive. CBS Los Angeles reported a July 2017 incident in which he assisted a homeless mother and daughter, publicized their circumstances, and helped obtain community assistance and temporary lodging. Any balanced legal presentation should acknowledge this evidence because it demonstrates that his dealings with homeless individuals were not uniformly hostile.
The issue is therefore not that every interaction Dinse had with a homeless or mentally ill individual was abusive. The relevant issue is whether, in certain cases, he used police information and community networks to identify, characterize, locate, monitor, displace or generate enforcement against selected individuals.
B. Karine T. Philips
Karine T. Philips is a California attorney, State Bar No. 186645, admitted December 10, 1996. As of October 2026, the State Bar lists her license as Active, identifies her employer as the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, and shows no public disciplinary action in the Bar’s disciplinary-history table.
Philips was formally assigned as the Neighborhood Prosecutor for LAPD Topanga Division no later than 2014. Contemporary City Attorney assignment lists distinguish Philips from the prosecutors assigned to Van Nuys and West Valley: Philips was assigned specifically to Topanga.
In her own May 2015 public introduction, Philips wrote:
“Hi, my name is Karine Philips and I am your Neighborhood Prosecutor assigned to the LAPD’s Topanga division.”
She said her work focused on improving neighborhood “quality of life” and preventing public-safety problems.
Contemporary reporting described Los Angeles Neighborhood Prosecutors as addressing what were sometimes characterized as “broken windows” offenses, including vandalism, trespassing, loitering, graffiti, prostitution and code violations.
This institutional relationship is central to understanding Philips’s connection with Dinse. She was not merely a prosecutor who later happened to encounter a Topanga police officer. Her official job was to serve as the prosecutor embedded with or assigned to Dinse’s LAPD division and its surrounding communities.
That fact provides a legitimate administrative explanation for why Philips could have handled a misdemeanor arising from Topanga in 2017. It does not, by itself, prove that she was specially assigned to Kevin Perelman.
Philips’s public record also contains evidence inconsistent with a simplistic theory that her purpose was always incarceration. At a 2014 neighborhood meeting she promoted the City Attorney’s Neighborhood Justice Program, described as resolving low-level offenses through alternatives designed to keep offenders out of the traditional justice system.
That countervailing evidence should remain in the record.
II. The Crimebusters / Homeless Encampment Facebook Network
Two private Facebook communities became central to the later controversy:
Crimebusters of West Hills and Woodland Hills, created in approximately 2016, and Crimebusters Homeless Encampments / Homeless Transient Encampments of our West Valley, created in approximately 2017.
The groups were associated with LAPD volunteer Fern Peskin-White and included participation by current and former LAPD personnel. According to the formal 2018 civil-rights complaint, the groups primarily consisted of residents of West Hills, Woodland Hills, Canoga Park and Winnetka and were nominally intended to centralize photographs, videos and community reports about suspicious or criminal behavior.
The dispute was over what the groups became in practice.
A coalition consisting of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, Los Angeles Community Action Network, and National Coalition for the Homeless submitted a complaint to the California Attorney General dated August 1, 2018 and updated November 20, 2018. The complaint asked for an investigation into potential civil- and human-rights violations involving the Facebook groups and government participation.
The ACLU of Southern California subsequently cited this specific Attorney General complaint, along with the 2019 Knock LA and KTown for All investigations, in its 2021 report Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People. That does not prove every allegation contained in the complaint, but it independently establishes the provenance and significance of these materials within the civil-rights community.
III. What the 2018 Attorney General Complaint Alleged About Sean Dinse
The 2018 complaint contains allegations considerably more specific than generalized criticism of LAPD.
It alleged that members of the Facebook groups distributed names, criminal histories, information about mental-health status or treatment history, and drug or alcohol dependency information concerning people they were discussing.
It then singled out Sean Dinse.
The complaint alleged that Dinse repeatedly used his position as an LAPD Senior Lead Officer to obtain and publicize sensitive information concerning homeless individuals. It referenced screenshots identified as Figures 3 through 7.
Most significantly for the Perelman matter, the complaint states that, in one particular case, Dinse responded to a Facebook member complaining about a person accused of littering by sharing a screenshot of a law-enforcement database entry displaying that person’s personal information. The complaint cross-references the underlying littering complaint as Figure 12 and Dinse’s database screenshot as Figure 7.
This cross-reference becomes highly significant because Figure 12 is then described expressly as involving Mr. Perelman.
IV. The August 2017 “Mr. Perelman” Post
The Attorney General complaint states that an August 2017 Crimebusters of West Hills and Woodland Hills post accused an individual of littering, displayed photographs of his belongings and automobile, and instructed members to:
“Notice Mr. Perelman’s license plate.”
The complaint concluded that dissemination of those identifying photographs could expose the individual to targeted abuse.
This is one of the most important pieces of independent evidence in the entire matter.
The complaint does not merely contain the surname “Perelman.” It contains a convergence of details:
Kevin Perelman; August 2017; Woodland Hills/Topanga; an allegation of littering; photographs of his car and property; specific attention directed to his license plate; and an LAPD Senior Lead Officer whose database disclosure is cross-referenced by the complaint to the same littering allegation.
Perelman states that the personalized license plate on his vehicle read TARGETD.
Perelman further states that the TARGETD plate was not an invitation to follow him and was not the origin of his concerns. His position is that the plate was selected because he already believed he had been subjected to repeated surveillance, harassment and targeting, including conduct involving Dinse. That explanation is Perelman’s account and should be identified as such unless supported by separate contemporaneous documentation establishing when the plate was obtained and why.
The legal significance does not depend on whether anyone agrees with the message expressed by the plate.
A personalized license plate saying TARGETD does not itself authorize police officers or private citizens to follow the vehicle, circulate identifying information for harassment, manufacture evidence, make false reports, or use confidential police databases improperly.
The relevant question is what the government actors and private participants actually did.
V. The Dinse–Perelman Database Cross-Reference
The cross-references in the Attorney General complaint deserve particular attention from counsel.
The complaint first states that Dinse responded to a Facebook member complaining about a person allegedly littering and posted a screenshot from a law-enforcement database containing that individual’s personal information. That complaint is identified as Figure 12.
Only paragraphs later, Figure 12 is expressly described as the August 2017 post involving Mr. Perelman, his alleged littering, his automobile and his license plate.
If those figure references accurately describe the original exhibits, this would appear to mean that Dinse accessed and disseminated law-enforcement database information in direct response to the Perelman littering discussion.
That proposition should not yet be represented as conclusively proven until the original high-resolution Figures 7 and 12 are obtained and authenticated. But it is substantially more than a speculative association.
It is a specific written allegation in a complaint prepared by multiple established homelessness and civil-rights organizations in 2018, before the later Dinse litigation and before much of the subsequent publicity.
For an attorney reviewing the 2017 Perelman prosecution, recovering the original Figures 7 and 12 should therefore be treated as a high priority.
The inquiry should establish exactly whose database record appeared in Figure 7, what information was displayed, which system produced it, who accessed that system, the date and time of the search, whether an official law-enforcement purpose existed, and whether any of that information was transmitted to witnesses or the prosecuting City Attorney.
VI. A Critical Factual Discrepancy: “Homeless” Versus Homeowner
The Attorney General complaint repeatedly describes the person in the Figure 12 incident as a “homeless individual.”
Kevin Perelman states that this characterization was false and that he was a homeowner residing in an HOA townhouse community at the relevant time.
That discrepancy should not be overlooked.
If property records, HOA records, utility records or other evidence establish that Perelman was a resident homeowner in August 2017, then lawyers should avoid adopting the complaint’s characterization of him as homeless.
The discrepancy may be analytically useful for another reason: it illustrates how an individual discussed inside an anti-homeless or “transient” social-media environment could potentially be placed into a preexisting social category that did not accurately describe him.
It does not establish who caused the misclassification.
The original Figure 12 should therefore be examined to determine whether the Facebook poster itself called Perelman homeless or transient, or whether the authors of the later Attorney General complaint inferred that status because they were analyzing anti-homeless Facebook groups.
That difference matters.
VII. Dinse, Mental-Illness Labels, and Rex Schellenberg
The strongest independently reported example of Dinse applying a mental-illness characterization to a particular person involves Rex Schellenberg.
In February 2020, Schellenberg filed a federal civil-rights action against the City of Los Angeles and Sean Dinse under 42 U.S.C. §1983. Federal docket records confirm Dinse was individually named as a defendant.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Schellenberg alleged Dinse posted information identifying where Schellenberg was staying so that residents would contact police, thereby giving officers a supposed “pretextual basis” to force him to move or seize his property.
That allegation is important because it describes an operational sequence:
community identification → dissemination of location → repeated calls or complaints → police contact → asserted legal justification → displacement or property enforcement.
The Times further reported that Dinse had publicly suggested Schellenberg had probably lost housing because of “drug addiction/mental illness.”
Schellenberg specifically disputed those labels and asserted in the lawsuit that he was neither a drug addict nor mentally ill apart from the ordinary stress and trauma associated with living on the streets.
No court judgment establishing that Dinse violated Schellenberg’s rights was located in this research. The statements are allegations contained in litigation and reported by reputable news organizations.
Nevertheless, the Schellenberg case demonstrates that Kevin Perelman is not the only person to have alleged a combination of:
individualized tracking by Dinse; dissemination of location information; community reporting; a mental-illness/addiction characterization; vehicle-related enforcement; and police action allegedly designed to create a basis for displacement.
That comparison is potentially significant.
It does not establish that whatever happened to Schellenberg necessarily happened to Perelman.
It establishes an independent factual reason for counsel to examine Dinse’s conduct toward Perelman rather than dismissing the issue simply because Perelman describes himself as having been targeted.
VIII. Broader Reporting Concerning Dinse and the Facebook Groups
Los Angeles Magazine independently reported in August 2019 that Dinse regularly used the groups to obtain information about homeless encampments and to track specific homeless individuals. The publication reported that LAPD had conducted a formal review after complaints concerning the groups. Investigators reportedly found “demeaning” comments concerning homeless people, and participating officers were temporarily asked not to post while the review was underway.
The groups contained rhetoric suggesting the use of baseball bats, fire hoses, pigeon spikes, bleach, stink bombs, poison oak and other tactics against homeless people, according to screenshots reviewed by the publication. Los Angeles Magazine appropriately clarified that the group’s administrator disputed characterizing the groups themselves as anti-homeless vigilante organizations and said such behavior was discouraged.
This distinction is essential.
The existence of offensive or violent comments inside a group does not establish that Dinse or Philips wrote, endorsed or acted upon those particular comments.
The legally relevant questions are whether government personnel participated, what information they supplied, what enforcement resulted, and whether they knew about or facilitated unlawful conduct by private participants.
IX. Knock LA’s Reporting Concerning Dinse, Rygh and Rehabilitation / Wellness Homes
A separate August 2019 Knock LA investigation reported allegations that Dinse and former Topanga Senior Lead Officer Brent Rygh had provided community members with privileged background information regarding people residing in residential rehabilitation or wellness homes. According to the publication’s sources, neighborhood complaints followed and a residence eventually closed.
Knock LA also reported that Dinse routinely emphasized documenting people and activity so that alleged nuisance activity could be removed from neighborhoods, and that particular individuals were repeatedly tracked through the groups.
These allegations are not judicial findings.
They are nevertheless relevant because they independently concern the same intersection of policing, neighborhood groups, personal background information, behavioral-health-related facilities, and community pressure that warrants examination in the Perelman matter.
X. Karine Philips and the Crimebusters Network
The evidence regarding Philips requires greater caution than the Dinse evidence.
A 2019 KTown for All article, reproduced in surviving copies and later cited by the ACLU, listed numerous LAPD personnel and Deputy City Attorney Karine Philips as members of the controversial Facebook-group environment. The reproduced list includes Dinse, Brent Rygh, Karen Rayner, Duke Dao, Daryl Scoggins, Gabriel Ahedo, John Catalano, Kari McNamee, Jose Fernandez, LAPD command personnel and Philips.
This is significant because Philips simultaneously occupied the official role of Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor.
It creates a potential overlap between:
the prosecutor responsible for Topanga quality-of-life prosecutions;
the LAPD officers supplying or receiving neighborhood intelligence;
private Facebook groups discussing targeted individuals;
and community witnesses or complainants.
However, the public material located to date does not establish that Philips personally authored threatening Facebook posts, supplied confidential medical information, encouraged anyone to assault a homeless person, or personally instructed anyone to stalk Kevin Perelman.
No Philips-authored screenshot showing such conduct was located during this investigation.
Membership and participation are not synonymous.
That distinction should be preserved in every version of this memorandum intended for attorneys, journalists or publication.
XI. Edward Ryan’s Specific Allegations Concerning Philips, Dinse and Perelman
Separate from the mainstream reporting and the original Attorney General complaint is material published by activist Edward Ryan.
Ryan specifically alleged that Philips prosecuted Kevin Perelman while Philips, Dinse and civilian witnesses were associated with the Crimebusters group. He further alleged that posts concerning Perelman’s location and automobile occurred around court proceedings and that this association was not disclosed during the prosecution.
Ryan’s material goes considerably further than the original civil-rights complaint. He alleges prosecutorial conspiracy, witness impropriety and intentional targeting.
Those assertions must be treated as allegations by Ryan, not established facts.
The valuable aspect of Ryan’s material is that it identifies highly specific factual questions that are capable of verification:
Was Philips actually a member of the relevant group during the Perelman prosecution?
Was Dinse?
Were any prosecution witnesses members?
Were Perelman’s location, court appearances or automobile discussed in the group contemporaneously with the case?
Did Philips know about those discussions?
Were any group-generated photographs, complaints, police information or witness contacts incorporated into the prosecution?
Were these relationships disclosed to the defense?
Those are discoverable historical questions, not matters of belief.
XII. Kevin Perelman’s 2017 Case
Kevin Perelman identifies his 2017 Van Nuys case as 7VW04099 and identifies Karine Philips as the prosecutor.
Perelman reports that the prosecution arose from events involving community members and that it ultimately involved allegations such as littering and/or distribution of cards or materials.
For purposes of this memorandum, those procedural details should be verified against the certified docket, charging document, police reports, transcripts and minute orders before being quoted as final fact.
What can already be independently stated is that during August 2017, while Philips was Topanga’s assigned Neighborhood Prosecutor, a private Crimebusters post concerning a “Mr. Perelman” accused him of littering, circulated photographs of his automobile and belongings, and specifically told other group members to notice his license plate.
The Attorney General complaint further appears to cross-reference this same littering incident to an instance in which Dinse allegedly posted law-enforcement database information.
This makes the exact chronology of 7VW04099 extremely important.
Counsel should determine whether the Facebook posts preceded arrest, charging, arraignment, witness contact or trial; whether they occurred during an active prosecution; and whether anyone in the prosecution team knew of the group’s activity.
XIII. The TARGETD License Plate
Perelman’s position regarding his personalized plate should be stated clearly rather than allowing the plate to become a substitute for evidence.
Perelman states that he obtained or used the plate TARGETD because he believed that Sean Dinse and others had already been targeting or harassing him.
Accordingly, his contention is that:
the plate was a reaction to what he perceived and documented as prior conduct;
the plate did not cause the targeting;
and the existence of the plate cannot rationally justify subsequent monitoring.
Independent public evidence presently confirms only the latter part of the chronology: by August 2017, members of the Crimebusters group were being specifically directed to notice Perelman’s license plate.
For a lawyer, the best way to establish the first part would be to obtain DMV records showing when the TARGETD plate was issued and then identify documented encounters with Dinse or Topanga personnel occurring before that date.
If evidence demonstrates that Dinse-related activity preceded issuance of the plate, it would materially answer any attempt to portray the license plate itself as the origin of Perelman’s targeting concerns.
XIV. Apparent Operational Objectives and Motives
“Motive” must be divided into what participants publicly said they wanted and what remains inferential.
Sean Dinse
The strongest documented objectives attributable to Dinse involve neighborhood safety, Neighborhood Watch, nuisance control, crime prevention and the treatment of homelessness as intertwined with addiction and mental illness.
He publicly advocated neighborhood-watch policing and was reported to use Facebook groups to gather information concerning encampments and particular individuals.
He publicly argued that irrational behavior connected to addiction or potential mental illness needed to be stabilized before housing would work.
The Attorney General complaint alleges a more aggressive operational method: using law-enforcement access to supply sensitive information to civilian groups that were identifying and monitoring individuals.
The Schellenberg lawsuit alleges an even more specific mechanism: publicize an individual’s whereabouts, encourage residents to call police, and thereby generate what the plaintiff characterized as a “pretextual basis” for police removal or property seizure.
If evidence establishes that a comparable mechanism was employed against Perelman, then the relevant motive need not be described as mysterious or global. It could be framed much more concretely as an effort to classify an individual as a neighborhood nuisance or threat, mobilize community complaints, create repeated police contacts, and ultimately obtain enforcement or judicial restrictions.
Whether that occurred in Perelman’s case remains to be proved.
Karine Philips
Philips herself publicly described her mission as improving neighborhood quality of life and preventing public-safety problems.
Her position placed her on the prosecutorial side of the same community-policing structure within Topanga.
Thus a plausible institutional motive existed for Philips to pursue low-level or quality-of-life cases generated through Topanga officers and neighborhood complaints: doing so was part of her job.
The more serious question is whether that ordinary institutional role crossed a constitutional or ethical line because of undisclosed relationships, social-media participation, false evidence, retaliatory motive or the use of improperly acquired information.
No public source located so far resolves that question.
XV. Mental-Illness Labeling as a Potential Enforcement Mechanism
The documented materials justify examining mental-health labeling carefully without claiming more than the evidence proves.
The 2018 Attorney General complaint specifically alleged that private information circulated in the Facebook groups included people’s mental-health status and treatment histories, and it specifically accused Dinse of using his police position to access and distribute sensitive information.
The Schellenberg litigation independently alleged that Dinse publicly characterized an individual as probably suffering from “drug addiction/mental illness,” a characterization the individual disputed.
Dinse also publicly associated homelessness with mental illness and addiction in his governmental and political statements.
Those facts establish that mental-health characterization was part of Dinse’s documented discourse and was allegedly attached to specific people.
They do not establish that every mental-health concern expressed by Dinse was fabricated.
They also do not yet establish that Dinse gave Philips false psychiatric information about Kevin Perelman.
That is the evidentiary bridge that must be investigated.
If Perelman’s 2017 transcripts, probation proceedings, police reports or later records show that prosecutors or judges suddenly began receiving psychiatric descriptions not supported by legitimate medical evidence, counsel should determine where those descriptions originated.
XVI. Allegations of Forced Psychiatric Treatment or Institutionalization
The public evidence located does not presently establish that either Dinse or Philips personally possessed or exercised unilateral power to commit Perelman or another individual to a psychiatric institution.
No independently verified document located during this research establishes that Philips ordered a §5150 detention, fabricated a psychiatric diagnosis, personally arranged involuntary medication, or directed a psychiatric facility to imprison Perelman.
Perelman states that he possesses evidence concerning unlawful confinement, false mental-health representations and community coordination. Those materials should be evaluated separately on their own evidentiary merits.
The strongest public evidence presently establishes something narrower but still important:
Dinse was accused of disseminating mental-health information;
Dinse publicly characterized Schellenberg in mental-health/addiction terms;
community groups tracked individuals;
Philips occupied the prosecutor position attached to the same LAPD division;
and Philips was later reported as belonging to the same Facebook-group ecosystem.
Whether these ingredients were used together against Perelman requires the underlying records.
XVII. Philips and Later Homeless / Public-Space Enforcement
Philips remained involved years later in issues involving public space.
A January 2023 Winnetka Neighborhood Council agenda identifies City Attorney representative Karine Philips as participating with LAPD regarding park hours and immediately references City Council actions concerning Los Angeles Municipal Code §41.18, the ordinance governing specified sitting, lying, sleeping and property activity within public rights-of-way.
This establishes continuing professional involvement in a legal area affecting homeless and public-space enforcement.
It does not establish misconduct.
It does, however, reinforce that her Topanga-era work and later City Attorney responsibilities included precisely the type of quality-of-life / public-space enforcement relevant to the broader Crimebusters controversy.
XVIII. Governor Newsom and CARE Court
The CARE Court issue should be kept separate from the 2017 case.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act, SB 1338, on September 14, 2022.
Therefore CARE Court did not exist in 2017 and could not have authorized or caused conduct in Perelman’s 2017 prosecution.
No evidence located connects Karine Philips personally to Governor Newsom, the drafting of SB 1338 or the creation of CARE Court.
A later institutional relationship does exist. In April 2023 the Los Angeles City Council expressly recognized that because the City Attorney prosecutes misdemeanor crimes and infractions, City Attorney cases could potentially involve people whose matters later intersect with CARE Court.
But this is a post-2022 policy development.
Los Angeles County currently describes CARE Court as a civil program for narrowly defined serious psychotic disorders and states that participants cannot be forced to take medication or remain in the program merely because they were petitioned into it. LPS conservatorship and involuntary commitment are separate legal systems.
For a lawyer evaluating the 2017 matter, attempting to tie Philips or Dinse retrospectively to Newsom’s 2022 CARE Act would weaken the presentation unless independent evidence emerges.
The more compelling investigation concerns the preexisting Topanga network, community-policing apparatus, Crimebusters groups, mental-health information and Perelman prosecution itself.
XIX. Misconduct Findings Concerning Philips
An extensive public search for Philips combined with terms including prosecutorial misconduct, Brady, Giglio, sanctions, discipline, civil rights, false evidence and related concepts produced no published appellate decision establishing prosecutorial misconduct by her and no public State Bar disciplinary record.
The State Bar presently shows her as active, and its public disciplinary table contains no disciplinary action.
That negative evidence must be included.
It does not prove that every decision Philips ever made was proper.
It means that a lawyer should not represent that Philips has an established public disciplinary history when the currently accessible record does not show one.
The potentially relevant misconduct issue in the Perelman matter is instead case specific: whether she possessed undisclosed information, had undisclosed relationships with witnesses or officers, knew of social-media activity involving the defendant, used false information, failed to disclose favorable or impeachment evidence, or participated in retaliatory prosecution.
XX. Potential Disclosure and Conflict Issues for Counsel to Examine
If the factual allegations concerning group membership and prosecution overlap can be authenticated, several questions could become legally significant.
If Philips was a member of the same private group in which the defendant, his vehicle, license plate, location or alleged conduct were being discussed, defense counsel would want to know whether she observed those discussions and whether they influenced charging, witnesses, plea negotiations or sentencing.
If Dinse used a law-enforcement database in response to the Perelman littering post, counsel would want to determine whether the resulting information reached Philips or prosecution witnesses.
If a prosecution witness was simultaneously a participant in a group organizing complaints or monitoring the defendant, that relationship could constitute significant impeachment information.
If Philips knew that witnesses were coordinating outside ordinary police channels and did not disclose that relationship, counsel could examine potential Brady/Giglio, due-process and prosecutorial-ethics issues, depending upon the facts and materiality.
If prosecution was undertaken or particular restrictions were sought because Perelman was criticizing Dinse, LAPD or the Crimebusters network, counsel could examine potential First Amendment retaliation theories.
None of these theories should be asserted as established merely from group membership. They become substantial only if contemporaneous communications, prosecution files or authenticated posts establish the connection.
XXI. The First Amendment / Website Issue
Perelman states that his cards, writings and website criticized Sean Dinse, LAPD and people he believed were participating in harassment against him.
If the alleged “littering” or card-distribution prosecution involved literature directing people to a website critical of Dinse or Topanga personnel, the content and handling of those materials deserve careful examination.
The critical questions are whether enforcement targeted the physical conduct itself—for example actual unlawful littering—or whether the content and viewpoint of Perelman’s speech contributed to investigation, charging, witness mobilization, probation conditions or punishment.
The contemporaneous Facebook activity is relevant because it may reveal what police and community members were saying about Perelman and his speech at the same time.
An attorney should therefore obtain not only the charging documents but the actual cards, photographs, Facebook posts, officer communications and any statements concerning Perelman’s website.
XXII. Strongest Evidence Versus Weakest Inferences
For legal presentation, the evidence can presently be ranked by reliability.
Strongly documented: Philips was the officially assigned Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor; Dinse was a Topanga Senior Lead Officer; private Crimebusters groups existed and included active police participation; established civil-rights organizations filed a formal Attorney General complaint; that complaint names a “Mr. Perelman” in an August 2017 littering/automobile/license-plate post; the complaint alleges Dinse used a police database in response to the littering complaint cross-referenced as Figure 12; Dinse was later individually sued in federal court; independent journalism reported allegations that Dinse tracked Schellenberg, shared his location and characterized him through mental illness/addiction; LAPD itself reviewed the Facebook groups and acknowledged demeaning content existed.
Supported but requiring original exhibits: the proposition that Dinse’s Figure 7 database disclosure specifically displayed Kevin Perelman’s information; Philips’s exact membership status and participation during the precise dates of Perelman’s prosecution; whether prosecution witnesses were Facebook-group members; and whether posts occurred immediately before or after particular court appearances.
Unproven allegations requiring independent evidence: that Philips and Dinse conspired to fabricate 7VW04099; that Philips instructed civilians to assault or batter Perelman; that either official intentionally created a false psychiatric diagnosis; that they attempted to force Perelman into a mental institution; or that Governor Newsom/CARE Court had anything to do with the 2017 prosecution.
Keeping these categories separate strengthens, rather than weakens, the potentially provable case.
XXIII. Records That Could Resolve the Central Questions
Counsel investigating this matter should seek the original 2018 Attorney General complaint and complete high-resolution appendix, particularly Figures 7, 12 and 13; preserved Facebook posts, comments, group membership logs and administrator records from Crimebusters of West Hills and Woodland Hills and Homeless Transient Encampments of our West Valley; LAPD records identifying database searches of Kevin Perelman or his license plate during the relevant 2017 period; Dinse’s official and personal social-media communications concerning Kevin Perelman, TARGETD, littering, court appearances, cards, Perelman’s website or case 7VW04099; communications between Dinse and Philips; communications involving Fern Peskin-White, Susan Fishman/Fishman-Epstein, Terrance Scroggins or any prosecution witness; City Attorney prosecution files, notes, witness-contact records and electronic communications for 7VW04099; Brady/Giglio or impeachment disclosures; Internal Affairs records concerning Dinse’s Facebook activity and the 2018 social-media investigation; records documenting when Perelman’s TARGETD plate was issued; property or HOA documentation establishing Perelman’s housing status in 2017; and complete court transcripts demonstrating exactly what Philips represented to the judge about Perelman, mental health, witnesses, the cards and the underlying allegations.
The most important evidentiary reconstruction is a minute-by-minute or day-by-day timeline combining:
Facebook activity → Dinse database activity → witness/community activity → police action → prosecutor activity → court proceedings.
If the events align temporally, the significance of the overlap increases substantially.
XXIV. Overall Assessment
The public record does not presently justify stating as established fact that Karine Philips and Sean Dinse criminally conspired to imprison Kevin Perelman or force him into a mental institution.
It does establish something narrower, unusual and worthy of serious investigation.
Philips was the prosecutor officially assigned to LAPD Topanga Division.
Dinse was a Topanga Senior Lead Officer deeply involved in neighborhood-watch policing.
Private Facebook groups involving Topanga police personnel were used to identify and track particular individuals.
Civil-rights organizations formally complained that these groups facilitated cyberharassment, stalking, dissemination of personal information and anti-homeless abuse.
That complaint specifically accused Dinse of distributing information obtained through his law-enforcement position.
The same complaint contains an August 2017 post involving “Mr. Perelman,” an accusation of littering, photographs of his vehicle and a direction to notice his license plate.
Most importantly, the complaint appears to cross-reference that Perelman littering incident with an allegation that Dinse responded by posting information from a law-enforcement database.
Dinse was subsequently sued by another individual, Rex Schellenberg, over allegations that he used Facebook to publicize Schellenberg’s location, encourage resident reporting, create a purported basis for removal or property enforcement, and publicly characterize Schellenberg through “drug addiction/mental illness.”
Independent reporting further documented LAPD review of these Facebook groups and police participation in an environment containing degrading and at times violent anti-homeless rhetoric.
Philips was subsequently reported as a member of the same Facebook-group environment, although no presently located evidence demonstrates that she personally authored threatening posts or distributed confidential information.
For Kevin Perelman, the central legal question is therefore not whether one accepts an overarching theory about every event he has experienced.
The narrower and demonstrably investigable question is this:
Did LAPD Senior Lead Officer Sean Dinse, Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor Karine T. Philips, prosecution witnesses or members of the Crimebusters network exchange information, monitor Kevin Perelman, disseminate law-enforcement or mental-health information about him, coordinate complaints or witnesses, or otherwise influence the investigation and prosecution in case 7VW04099 without disclosure to the defense?
That question is grounded in contemporaneous public evidence.
It can be answered through records.
And the August 2017 Attorney General complaint’s explicit reference to Mr. Perelman, his alleged littering, his vehicle, his license plate and Dinse’s alleged law-enforcement database disclosure makes obtaining those records substantially more important than treating the matter as merely an unsupported personal suspicion.
Evidentiary Position Regarding Kevin Perelman
Kevin Perelman’s position should be accurately stated as follows:
Perelman maintains that he was already experiencing conduct from Sean Dinse, LAPD personnel and associated community members that he regarded as targeted harassment before the Crimebusters posts highlighted his vehicle. He states that his personalized TARGETD license plate reflected his reaction to that preexisting experience; it was not the cause of it.
Independent evidence has not yet established every component of Perelman’s broader account. It does, however, establish that by August 2017 a private neighborhood group connected to active Topanga law-enforcement personnel was circulating photographs of a Mr. Perelman, accusing him of littering and specifically directing members to notice his license plate. The formal civil-rights complaint contemporaneously characterized this as conduct that could expose the individual to targeted abuse.
That independent evidence should be the starting point for further investigation.