🔗 Share this article

The true crime genre has an innovative format, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: officer-worn camera recordings. Countenances of those harmed, observers and possible perpetrators loom up to the cameras, sometimes in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or flashlights as the officers approach, their expressions and tones expressing wariness or fear or anger or dubiously feigned naivety. And we often incidentally glimpse the faces of the law enforcement personnel, one standing by blankly while the other asks the questions with what occasionally seems like extraordinary diffidence – though perhaps this is because they know they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Documentary Filmmaking

We have already had the Netflix real-life crime film The Gabby Petito Case, about the slaying of an social media personality by her boyfriend, whose primary focus was body cam footage and in which, as in this film, the law enforcement seemed extraordinarily lax with the perpetrator. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, composed entirely of officer footage. Now comes a new film by Geeta Gandbhir about the tragic incident of Ajike Owens in Ocala, Florida, a African American woman whose children reportedly bothered and tormented her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighborhood conflicts in which the police were repeatedly called, Lorincz fatally shot Owens through her locked door, when the victim went to the neighbor's residence to address her about throwing objects at her children.

The Investigation and State Laws

The arresting officers found proof that the suspect had done online research into Florida’s “stand your ground” laws, which allow residents and others to use firearms if there is a reasonable belief of danger. The movie constructs its narrative with the body cam footage generated during the multiple officer calls to the scene before the shooting, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – introduced by emergency call recordings of the caller contacting authorities in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also police cell footage of Lorincz which has a disturbing, unsettling appeal.

Depiction of the Suspect

The documentary does not really suggest anything too complicated about the neighbor, or any mitigating factors. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her a derogatory term, an hurtful taunt. The production is presented as an illustration of how “stand your ground” laws lead to senseless and tragic bloodshed. But the reality of gun ownership and the constitutional right (that longstanding U.S. legal right that a late commentator famously claimed made gun deaths a necessary cost) is not much highlighted.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is possible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel surprised at how minimal concern the police took in this aspect. At what time did she purchase the firearm? Did she receive any instruction on handling it? Was this the first time she discharged the weapon? Where did she store it in the house? Could it have been easily accessible and prepared? The police aren’t shown asking any of these undoubtedly important questions (though they may have done in footage that were not included). Or is possessing a firearm so normal it would be like asking about kitchen appliances or bread heaters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her local residents a very long time, the suspect was not even taken into custody and indicted, only held and even provided accommodation away from home for the night (another parallel, incidentally, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was ultimately formally arrested in the detention area, there is an extraordinary sequence in which Lorincz simply refuses to stand, refuses to put her wrists out for the handcuffs, not aggressively, but with the courteously pathetic demeanor of someone whose mental health means that she just can’t do it. Did the gentle handling up until that point encouraged her to think that this might actually work?

Final Outcome and Judgment

It didn’t; and the panel's decision is saved for the closing credits. A very sombre picture of U.S. justice and consequences.