🔗 Share this article

The real-life crime category has a new medium, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: police body cam footage. Countenances of those harmed, observers and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, sometimes in the harsh glare of headlights or flashlights as the police arrive, their faces and voices expressing caution 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 asks the questions with what occasionally seems like extraordinary diffidence – though perhaps this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have already had the Netflix real-life crime film The Gabby Petito Case, about the slaying of an Instagram influencer by her partner, whose primary focus was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the police seemed surprisingly lenient with the perpetrator. There is also the acclaimed short film Incident by Bill Morrison, made exclusively of body cam film. Now comes a new film by Geeta Gandbhir about the tragic incident of a Florida mother in Ocala, Florida, a woman of colour whose four young kids reportedly bothered and tormented her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighborhood conflicts in which the authorities were repeatedly called, the accused shot Owens dead through her closed front door, when the victim went to the neighbor's residence to confront her about hurling items at her children.

The Investigation and State Laws

The investigating authorities found proof that Lorincz 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 body cam footage captured during the multiple officer calls to the scene before the killing, and then at the horrific and chaotic crime scene itself – prefaced by 911 audio material of the caller calling the police 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 suggest anything too complex about Lorincz, or any extenuating circumstance. She is obviously disturbed, although the kids are heard calling her “the Karen”, an ugly jibe. The production is presented as an illustration of how “stand your ground” laws lead to senseless and tragic violence. But the reality of firearm possession and the second amendment (that historic American constitutional privilege that a late commentator famously claimed made firearm fatalities a price worth paying) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is feasible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel surprised at how little interest the police took in this point. At what time did she purchase the firearm? Did she receive any instruction on handling it? Was this the first time she discharged the weapon? 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 surely relevant questions (though they may have done in recordings that didn’t make the edit). Or is possessing a firearm 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 arrested and charged, only detained 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 detention area, there is an remarkable scene in which the individual simply declines to rise, refuses to put her wrists out for the handcuffs, not hostilely, but with the courteously pathetic demeanor 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 could be effective?

Conclusion and Verdict

It was not successful; and the panel's decision is saved for the end titles. A very sombre portrayal of American crime and punishment.