🔗 Share this article

The real-life crime genre has a new medium, or perhaps even a whole new language and structure: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, observers and possible perpetrators appear suddenly to the cameras, sometimes in the intense brightness of vehicle beams or flashlights as the police arrive, their faces and voices eloquent of wariness or panic 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 conducts the inquiry with what occasionally seems like remarkable hesitation – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Documentary Filmmaking

We have already had 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 law enforcement seemed surprisingly lenient with the suspect. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, composed entirely of body cam film. Now comes Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the grim case of Ajike Owens in a city in Florida, a African American woman whose children reportedly bothered and antagonized her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the police were repeatedly called, the accused shot Owens dead through her closed front door, when the victim went to the neighbor's residence to confront her about throwing objects at her children.

The Police Inquiry and State Laws

The investigating authorities found evidence that Lorincz had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which permit residents and others to use firearms if there is a reasonable belief of danger. The documentary constructs its narrative with the officer recordings captured during the repeated police visits to the location before the shooting, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – prefaced by 911 audio material of the caller calling the police in a melodramatically shaky voice. There is also police cell footage 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 obviously disturbed, although the kids are heard calling her a derogatory term, an ugly jibe. The film is showcased as an illustration of how “stand your ground” laws generate unnecessary and heartbreaking bloodshed. But the fact of firearm possession and the second amendment (that historic American constitutional privilege that a late commentator famously claimed 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 little interest the police took in this point. At what time did she purchase the firearm? Did she receive any instruction on handling it? 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 surely relevant questions (though they could have inquired in footage that were not included). Or is gun ownership so commonplace it would be like asking about kitchen appliances or toasters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her local residents a extended period, the suspect was not even taken into custody and indicted, only detained and even provided accommodation away from home for the night (another point of comparison, by the way, 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 refuses to stand, 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?

Conclusion and Verdict

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