🔗 Share this article

The true crime genre has an innovative format, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, witnesses and potential offenders loom up to the cameras, at times in the intense brightness of vehicle beams or flashlights as the officers approach, their expressions and tones eloquent of caution or panic or indignation or suspiciously contrived innocence. And we often incidentally glimpse the faces of the officers themselves, one standing by blankly while the other asks the questions with what occasionally seems like extraordinary diffidence – though maybe this is because they know they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have previously seen the streaming service true-crime documentary The Gabby Petito Case, about the killing of an Instagram influencer 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, composed entirely of officer footage. Now comes Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the grim case of Ajike Owens in a city in Florida, a African American woman whose four young kids reportedly bothered and antagonized her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighborhood conflicts in which the police were repeatedly called, the accused shot Owens dead through her locked door, when Owens went to Lorincz’s house to address her about hurling items at her children.

The Police Inquiry and Legal Context

The investigating authorities found proof that Lorincz had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which permit householders and others to shoot if there is a reasonable belief of danger. The documentary builds its story with the officer recordings generated during the multiple officer calls to the scene before the shooting, and then at the horrific and chaotic crime scene itself – prefaced by emergency call recordings of the caller calling the police in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also police cell footage of Lorincz which has a disturbing, unsettling appeal.

Depiction of the Suspect

The film does not really suggest anything too complicated about the neighbor, or any extenuating circumstance. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her “the Karen”, an hurtful taunt. The production is showcased as an illustration of how “stand your ground” laws lead to unnecessary and heartbreaking bloodshed. But the fact of gun ownership and the constitutional right (that longstanding U.S. legal right that a deceased pundit famously claimed made gun deaths a price worth paying) is not much highlighted.

Police Interrogation and Gun Culture

It is possible to watch the officer questioning segments here and feel surprised at how little interest the officers took in this aspect. When did she buy her gun? Did she receive any instruction on handling it? 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 were not included). Or is gun ownership so normal it would be like asking about kitchen appliances or toasters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her neighbors a very long time, the suspect was not even arrested and charged, only held and even provided accommodation away from home for the night (another parallel, by the way, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was ultimately officially taken into custody in the holding cell, there is an extraordinary sequence in which the individual simply declines to rise, will not extend her arms for the cuffs, not hostilely, but with the courteously pathetic demeanor of someone whose mental health means that she is unable to comply. Did the gentle handling up until that point led her to think that this might actually work?

Conclusion and Verdict

It didn’t; and the panel's decision is saved for the closing credits. A deeply sobering portrayal of U.S. justice and consequences.