🔗 Share this article

The true crime category has an innovative format, or perhaps even a whole new language and grammar: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, observers and possible perpetrators appear suddenly to the cameras, at times in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or flashlights as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing caution or panic or anger or suspiciously contrived innocence. And we often incidentally glimpse the expressions of the officers themselves, one standing by blankly while the other asks the questions with what sometimes seems like extraordinary diffidence – though maybe this is because they know they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have previously seen the streaming service true-crime documentary American Murder: Gabby Petito, about the slaying of an Instagram influencer by her boyfriend, whose main point of interest was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the police seemed extraordinarily lax with the perpetrator. There is also the acclaimed short film Incident by Bill Morrison, made exclusively of officer footage. Now comes a new film by Geeta Gandbhir about the tragic incident of Ajike Owens in a city in Florida, a African American woman whose children allegedly harassed and tormented her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the authorities were repeatedly called, Lorincz shot Owens dead through her closed front door, when Owens went to Lorincz’s house to confront her about throwing objects at her children.

The Investigation and Legal Context

The arresting officers found evidence that Lorincz had done online research into the state's self-defense statutes, which allow householders and others to shoot if there is a reasonable belief of threat. The documentary constructs its narrative with the officer recordings generated during the multiple officer calls to the location before the killing, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – prefaced by emergency call recordings of Lorincz contacting authorities in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also jail video of the individual which has a disturbing, unsettling appeal.

Portrayal of the Accused

The documentary does not really imply anything too complicated about Lorincz, or any extenuating circumstance. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her a derogatory term, an ugly jibe. The film is presented as an illustration of how “stand your ground” laws generate unnecessary and heartbreaking bloodshed. But the reality of gun ownership and the constitutional right (that longstanding U.S. legal right that a deceased pundit notoriously said made firearm fatalities a necessary cost) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is possible to watch the officer questioning segments here and feel surprised at how minimal concern the officers took in this point. When did she buy her gun? Where (if anywhere) did she train in its use? 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 authorities 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 microwaves or toasters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her neighbors a very long time, Lorincz was not even arrested and charged, only held and even offered a hotel stay away from home for the night (another point of comparison, incidentally, with the a prior incident). And when she was finally officially taken into custody in the detention area, there is an remarkable scene in which the individual simply declines to rise, will not extend her arms for the cuffs, not hostilely, but with the politely self-pitying air of someone whose psychological state means that she just can’t do it. Had the kid-gloves treatment up until that point led her to think that this could be effective?

Final Outcome and Judgment

It was not successful; and the panel's decision is saved for the closing credits. A very sombre picture of American crime and punishment.