🔗 Share this article

The real-life crime category has an innovative format, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, witnesses and possible perpetrators loom up to the cameras, at times in the intense brightness of vehicle beams or torches as the officers approach, their faces and voices expressing caution or panic or indignation or dubiously feigned naivety. And we often catch sight of the faces of the officers themselves, one waiting impassively while the other conducts the inquiry with what sometimes seems like extraordinary diffidence – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have previously seen the Netflix true-crime documentary American Murder: Gabby Petito, about the slaying of an Instagram influencer by her partner, whose primary focus 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, made exclusively of body cam film. Now comes Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the grim case of Ajike Owens in Ocala, Florida, a African American woman whose children reportedly bothered and antagonized her white neighbour, a local resident. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighbour-dispute incidents in which the authorities were summoned multiple times, Lorincz shot Owens dead through her closed front door, when Owens went to Lorincz’s house to confront her about hurling items at her children.

The Investigation and State Laws

The arresting officers found evidence that the suspect had done internet searches into Florida’s “stand your ground” laws, which permit residents and others to use firearms if there is a reasonable belief of danger. The documentary builds its story with the officer recordings captured during the repeated police visits to the location before the shooting, and then at the horrific and chaotic incident site itself – prefaced by emergency call recordings of the caller calling the police in a melodramatically shaky voice. There is also police cell footage of Lorincz which has a chilly, queasy fascination.

Depiction of the Suspect

The film does not really suggest anything too complex about Lorincz, 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 example of how self-defense regulations generate senseless and tragic violence. But the reality of gun ownership and the constitutional right (that historic American constitutional privilege that a deceased pundit famously claimed made gun deaths a necessary cost) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is possible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel astonished at how minimal concern the police took in this aspect. 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 authorities aren’t shown asking any of these undoubtedly important questions (though they may have done in footage 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 extended period, Lorincz was not even arrested and charged, only held and even offered a hotel stay away from home for the night (another parallel, incidentally, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was ultimately formally arrested in the holding cell, there is an extraordinary sequence in which the individual simply refuses to stand, will not extend her arms for the cuffs, not hostilely, but with the politely self-pitying air of someone whose psychological state means that she just can’t do it. Did the gentle handling up until that point led her to think that this could be effective?

Final Outcome and Judgment

It didn’t; and the jury’s verdict is revealed in the end titles. A deeply sobering picture of American crime and punishment.