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The true crime category has an innovative format, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: officer-worn camera recordings. Countenances of those harmed, witnesses and possible perpetrators loom up to the cameras, at times in the harsh glare of headlights or torches as the police arrive, their faces and voices expressing wariness or fear or indignation or suspiciously contrived innocence. And we often incidentally glimpse the faces of the officers themselves, one standing by blankly while the other conducts the inquiry with what occasionally seems like extraordinary diffidence – though perhaps this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have already had the Netflix true-crime documentary The Gabby Petito Case, about the slaying of an social media personality by her boyfriend, whose primary focus was body cam footage and in which, as in this film, the law enforcement seemed extraordinarily lax with the perpetrator. 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 Ocala, Florida, a woman of colour whose children allegedly harassed and antagonized her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the authorities were repeatedly called, Lorincz shot Owens dead 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 arresting officers found evidence that the suspect had done online research into Florida’s “stand your ground” laws, which allow residents and others to use firearms if there is a significant presumption of danger. The movie builds its story with the body cam footage generated during the multiple officer calls to the scene before the shooting, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – introduced by emergency call recordings of Lorincz 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 suggest anything too complex about the neighbor, or any extenuating circumstance. She is clearly unstable, although the children are heard calling her a derogatory term, an ugly jibe. The production is presented as an example of how “stand your ground” laws lead to senseless and tragic bloodshed. But the reality of gun ownership and the second amendment (that historic American constitutional privilege that a deceased pundit notoriously said made gun deaths a price worth paying) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation and Gun Culture

It is possible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel astonished at how minimal concern the police took in this point. At what time did she purchase the firearm? Where (if anywhere) did she train in its use? Was this the first time she discharged the weapon? How was the gun kept in her home? 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 recordings that didn’t make the edit). Or is possessing a firearm so normal it would be like asking about microwaves or toasters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her local residents 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, by the way, with the a prior incident). And when she was ultimately officially taken into custody in the detention area, there is an extraordinary sequence in which Lorincz simply declines to rise, refuses to put her wrists out for the handcuffs, not aggressively, but with the politely self-pitying air of someone whose mental health 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 didn’t; and the jury’s verdict is revealed in the closing credits. A very sombre picture of American crime and punishment.