🔗 Share this article

The true crime genre has a new medium, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, observers and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, at times in the intense brightness of headlights or torches as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing wariness or fear or anger or dubiously feigned naivety. And we often incidentally glimpse the expressions of the law enforcement personnel, one standing by blankly while the other conducts the inquiry with what occasionally seems like remarkable hesitation – though perhaps this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have previously seen the Netflix real-life crime film American Murder: Gabby Petito, about the slaying of an social media personality by her partner, whose main point of interest was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the police seemed surprisingly lenient with the suspect. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, made exclusively of body cam film. 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 four young kids allegedly harassed and tormented 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 locked door, when Owens went to Lorincz’s house to confront her about throwing objects at her children.

The Police Inquiry and Legal Context

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 threat. The documentary builds its story with the body cam footage captured during the multiple officer calls to the location before the killing, and then at the horrific and chaotic crime scene itself – prefaced by 911 audio material of the caller calling the police in a melodramatically shaky voice. There is also jail video of Lorincz which has a disturbing, unsettling appeal.

Depiction of the Suspect

The film does not really imply anything too complex about Lorincz, or any mitigating factors. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her “the Karen”, an hurtful taunt. The production is showcased as an example of how self-defense regulations lead to senseless and tragic bloodshed. But the reality of firearm possession and the constitutional right (that historic American constitutional privilege that a deceased pundit notoriously said made gun deaths a price worth paying) is not much emphasized.

Officer Questioning and Gun Culture

It is feasible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel surprised at how minimal concern the officers took in this aspect. When did she buy her gun? Where (if anywhere) did she train in its use? Had she ever had occasion to fire it before? How was the gun kept in her home? Could it have been easily accessible and prepared? The authorities aren’t shown asking any of these undoubtedly important questions (though they could have inquired in recordings that didn’t make the edit). Or is gun ownership so normal it would be like asking about kitchen appliances or bread heaters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her neighbors a very long time, the suspect was not even taken into custody and indicted, only detained and even provided accommodation away from home for the night (another parallel, by the way, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was finally officially taken into custody in the holding cell, there is an remarkable scene in which Lorincz simply declines to rise, will not extend her arms for the cuffs, not hostilely, but with the politely self-pitying air of someone whose mental health means that she is unable to comply. Had the kid-gloves treatment up until that point encouraged her to think that this could be effective?

Final Outcome and Judgment

It didn’t; and the jury’s verdict is revealed in the end titles. A deeply sobering portrayal of American crime and punishment.