🔗 Share this article

The real-life crime genre has a new medium, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and grammar: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, witnesses and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, sometimes in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or flashlights as the officers approach, their faces and voices eloquent of wariness or fear or anger or dubiously feigned naivety. And we frequently catch sight of the faces of the law enforcement personnel, one waiting impassively while the other asks the questions with what sometimes seems like extraordinary diffidence – though perhaps this is because they know they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have already had the streaming service true-crime documentary The Gabby Petito Case, about the killing of an social media personality by her boyfriend, whose main point of interest was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the police seemed extraordinarily lax with the perpetrator. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, composed entirely of officer footage. Now comes a new film by Geeta Gandbhir about the grim case of Ajike Owens in a city in Florida, a woman of colour whose four young kids allegedly harassed and antagonized her neighbor, a local resident. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the authorities were repeatedly called, the accused fatally shot Owens through her closed front door, when Owens went to the neighbor's residence to confront her about throwing objects at her children.

The Investigation and State Laws

The investigating authorities found proof that the suspect had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which permit residents and others to use firearms if there is a significant presumption of danger. The documentary constructs its narrative 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 911 audio material of Lorincz contacting authorities in a melodramatically shaky 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 extenuating circumstance. She is clearly unstable, although the children are heard calling her a derogatory term, an ugly jibe. The production is showcased as an example of how self-defense regulations lead to senseless and tragic bloodshed. But the reality of gun ownership and the second amendment (that longstanding U.S. legal right that a late commentator famously claimed made firearm fatalities a price worth paying) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation 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? Did she receive any instruction on handling it? Had she ever had occasion to fire it before? How was the gun kept in her home? Could it have been easily accessible and prepared? The police aren’t shown asking any of these undoubtedly important questions (though they could have inquired in recordings that didn’t make the edit). Or is gun ownership so commonplace it would be like asking about kitchen appliances or bread heaters?

Arrest and Aftermath

For what appeared to her local residents a very long time, the suspect was not even arrested and charged, only detained and even provided accommodation away from home for the night (another parallel, incidentally, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was finally formally arrested in the holding cell, 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 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 was not successful; and the panel's decision is saved for the closing credits. A very sombre portrayal of American crime and punishment.