🔗 Share this article

The real-life crime genre has a new medium, or perhaps even a whole new language and structure: officer-worn camera recordings. Faces of victims, witnesses and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, sometimes in the harsh glare of headlights or flashlights as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing wariness or panic or anger or suspiciously contrived innocence. And we frequently incidentally glimpse the faces of the law enforcement personnel, one waiting impassively 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 Documentary Filmmaking

We have previously seen the streaming service true-crime documentary The Gabby Petito Case, 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 extraordinarily lax with the suspect. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, made exclusively of officer footage. Now comes Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the grim case of Ajike Owens in Ocala, Florida, a African American woman whose children reportedly bothered and antagonized her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the authorities were summoned multiple times, Lorincz shot Owens dead through her closed front door, when the victim went to Lorincz’s house to confront her about hurling items at her children.

The Police Inquiry and Legal Context

The investigating authorities found proof that the suspect had done online research into the state's self-defense statutes, which allow residents and others to shoot if there is a reasonable belief of threat. The movie constructs its narrative with the officer recordings generated during the multiple officer calls to the location before the shooting, and then at the horrific and chaotic incident site itself – prefaced by 911 audio material of the caller calling the police in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also jail video of Lorincz which has a chilly, queasy fascination.

Depiction of the Suspect

The film does not really imply anything too complex about the neighbor, or any mitigating factors. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her “the Karen”, an ugly jibe. The production is showcased as an example of how “stand your ground” laws lead to unnecessary and heartbreaking bloodshed. But the fact of firearm possession and the constitutional right (that historic American constitutional privilege that a late commentator notoriously said made gun deaths a necessary cost) is not much highlighted.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is feasible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel astonished 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? 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 undoubtedly important questions (though they could have inquired in footage that didn’t make the edit). Or is possessing a firearm so normal it would be like asking about microwaves or bread heaters?

Arrest and Aftermath

For what appeared to her local residents a very long time, Lorincz 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 a prior incident). And when she was finally formally arrested in the detention area, there is an remarkable scene in which the individual simply refuses to stand, refuses to put her wrists out for the handcuffs, not hostilely, but with the courteously pathetic demeanor of someone whose psychological state 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?

Conclusion and Verdict

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