🔗 Share this article

The true crime category has a new medium, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and grammar: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, observers and possible perpetrators loom up to the cameras, sometimes in the intense brightness of headlights or torches as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing caution or panic or anger or dubiously feigned naivety. And we often catch sight of the expressions of the officers themselves, one standing by blankly while the other conducts the inquiry with what sometimes seems like remarkable hesitation – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Documentary Filmmaking

We have previously seen the Netflix true-crime documentary American Murder: Gabby Petito, about the killing of an social media personality by her boyfriend, whose primary focus was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the law enforcement seemed surprisingly lenient with the suspect. There is also the acclaimed short film Incident by Bill Morrison, composed entirely of body cam film. Now comes Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the tragic incident of Ajike Owens in Ocala, Florida, a woman of colour whose children reportedly bothered and antagonized her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighborhood conflicts in which the police were summoned multiple times, the accused fatally shot Owens through her closed front door, when Owens went to the neighbor's residence to address her about hurling items at her children.

The Investigation and State Laws

The investigating authorities found evidence that Lorincz had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which permit householders and others to use firearms if there is a significant presumption of danger. The movie constructs its narrative with the body cam footage generated during the repeated police visits to the location before the killing, and then at the disturbing and disordered incident site itself – prefaced by 911 audio material of Lorincz calling the police in a melodramatically shaky voice. There is also police cell footage of the individual which has a chilly, queasy fascination.

Depiction of the Suspect

The documentary does not really suggest anything too complex about Lorincz, or any mitigating factors. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her “the Karen”, an ugly jibe. The production is presented as an illustration of how self-defense regulations lead to unnecessary and heartbreaking bloodshed. But the fact of firearm possession and the constitutional right (that longstanding U.S. legal right that a late commentator notoriously said made gun deaths a price worth paying) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is feasible to watch the officer questioning segments here and feel surprised at how minimal concern the police took in this point. 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? Was it just on the couch, loaded and ready? The police aren’t shown asking any of these surely relevant questions (though they may have done in recordings that were not included). Or is gun ownership so normal it would be like asking about kitchen appliances or bread heaters?

Arrest and Aftermath

For what seemed to her neighbors a very long time, Lorincz was not even arrested and charged, only detained and even offered a hotel stay 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 remarkable scene in which Lorincz simply declines to rise, will not extend her arms for the cuffs, not aggressively, but with the courteously pathetic demeanor of someone whose mental health means that she is unable to comply. Had the kid-gloves treatment up until that point led her to think that this might actually work?

Conclusion and Verdict

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