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The true crime category has a new medium, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: police body cam footage. Faces of victims, witnesses and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, at times in the intense brightness of vehicle beams or torches as the officers approach, their expressions and tones expressing wariness or panic or indignation or suspiciously contrived innocence. And we often incidentally glimpse the faces of the law enforcement personnel, one standing by blankly while the other conducts the inquiry with what sometimes seems like remarkable hesitation – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Documentary Filmmaking

We have previously seen the Netflix real-life crime film American Murder: Gabby Petito, about the killing of an social media personality by her partner, whose main point of interest was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the police seemed surprisingly lenient with the perpetrator. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, made exclusively of officer footage. Now comes Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary about the grim case of a Florida mother in Ocala, Florida, a African American woman whose four young kids allegedly harassed and antagonized her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighborhood conflicts in which the authorities were repeatedly called, Lorincz shot Owens dead through her locked door, when the victim went to Lorincz’s house to address her about throwing objects at her children.

The Investigation and Legal Context

The arresting officers found evidence that the suspect had done online research into Florida’s “stand your ground” laws, which allow householders and others to use firearms if there is a significant presumption of danger. The movie constructs its narrative with the body cam footage generated during the repeated police visits to the scene before the killing, and then at the horrific and chaotic crime scene itself – prefaced by 911 audio material of Lorincz calling the police in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also police cell footage of Lorincz which has a chilly, queasy fascination.

Depiction of the Suspect

The film does not really imply anything too complicated about the neighbor, or any mitigating factors. She is clearly unstable, although the children are heard calling her “the Karen”, an hurtful taunt. The film is showcased as an illustration of how self-defense regulations lead to unnecessary and heartbreaking violence. But the reality of firearm possession and the constitutional right (that historic American constitutional privilege that a late commentator famously claimed made gun deaths a necessary cost) is not much highlighted.

Officer Questioning and Gun Culture

It is possible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel astonished at how little interest the police took in this aspect. 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? 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 surely relevant questions (though they may have done in footage that didn’t make the edit). Or is gun ownership so normal it would be like asking about microwaves or bread heaters?

Arrest and Aftermath

For what appeared to her neighbors a very long time, Lorincz was not even arrested and charged, only held and even offered a hotel stay away from home for the night (another parallel, by the way, with the a prior incident). And when she was ultimately formally arrested in the detention area, there is an extraordinary sequence in which Lorincz simply refuses to stand, refuses to put her wrists out for the cuffs, not hostilely, but with the politely self-pitying air of someone whose mental health means that she is unable to comply. Had the kid-gloves treatment up until that point encouraged her to think that this could be effective?

Conclusion and Verdict

It was not successful; and the jury’s verdict is revealed in the end titles. A very sombre picture of American crime and punishment.