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The true crime category has an innovative format, or perhaps even a whole new language and structure: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, observers and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, sometimes in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or torches as the police arrive, their expressions and tones eloquent of caution or fear or anger or dubiously feigned naivety. And we frequently incidentally glimpse the expressions of the officers themselves, one waiting impassively while the other conducts the inquiry with what sometimes seems like remarkable hesitation – though maybe this is because they know they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Documentary Filmmaking

We have already had the streaming service true-crime documentary The Gabby Petito Case, about the killing of an Instagram influencer by her boyfriend, 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 the acclaimed short film Incident by Bill Morrison, composed entirely 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 woman of colour whose four young kids reportedly bothered and tormented her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the authorities were summoned multiple times, Lorincz shot Owens dead through her locked door, when the victim went to the neighbor's residence to confront her about hurling items at her children.

The Police Inquiry and State Laws

The arresting officers found proof that Lorincz had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which allow residents and others to use firearms if there is a significant presumption of danger. The documentary builds its story with the officer recordings generated during the multiple officer calls to the location before the shooting, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – introduced by emergency call recordings of the caller contacting authorities in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also jail video of Lorincz which has a chilly, queasy fascination.

Depiction of the Suspect

The documentary does not really imply anything too complex about the neighbor, or any extenuating circumstance. She is obviously disturbed, although the children are heard calling her a derogatory term, an ugly jibe. The production is presented as an illustration of how self-defense regulations generate unnecessary and heartbreaking bloodshed. But the reality of firearm possession and the second amendment (that historic American constitutional privilege that a late commentator notoriously said made gun deaths a price worth paying) is not much highlighted.

Officer Questioning and Firearm Norms

It is possible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel astonished at how little interest the officers took in this point. 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 recordings that were not included). Or is gun ownership so normal it would be like asking about microwaves or bread heaters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her local residents a very long time, Lorincz was not even taken into custody and indicted, only held and even offered a hotel stay away from home for the night (another point of comparison, incidentally, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was finally officially taken into custody in the detention area, there is an remarkable scene in which Lorincz simply declines to rise, will not extend her arms for the handcuffs, not aggressively, but with the politely self-pitying air of someone whose psychological state means that she just can’t do it. Had the kid-gloves treatment up until that point led her to think that this might actually work?

Final Outcome and Judgment

It was not successful; and the jury’s verdict is saved for the end titles. A very sombre portrayal of American crime and punishment.