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The real-life crime category has an innovative format, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: officer-worn camera recordings. Faces of victims, witnesses and potential offenders loom up to the cameras, at times in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or torches as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing wariness or fear or indignation or dubiously feigned naivety. And we often incidentally glimpse the expressions of the law enforcement personnel, one waiting impassively while the other asks the questions with what sometimes seems like remarkable hesitation – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Non-Fiction Cinema

We have already had the Netflix real-life crime film American Murder: Gabby Petito, about the slaying of an social media personality by her partner, whose primary focus was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the police seemed extraordinarily lax with the suspect. There is also the acclaimed short film Incident by Bill Morrison, 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 African American woman whose four young kids allegedly harassed and antagonized her white neighbour, a local resident. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighborhood conflicts in which the police were summoned multiple times, Lorincz shot Owens dead through her locked door, when Owens went to the neighbor's residence to address her about throwing objects at her children.

The Investigation and Legal Context

The investigating authorities found evidence that Lorincz had done online research into the state's self-defense statutes, which allow residents and others to shoot if there is a significant presumption of threat. The movie constructs its narrative with the body cam footage captured during the multiple officer calls to the scene before the killing, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – prefaced by emergency call recordings of Lorincz 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 documentary does not really imply anything too complex about Lorincz, or any mitigating factors. She is obviously disturbed, although the kids are heard calling her “the Karen”, an hurtful taunt. The film is presented as an example of how self-defense regulations lead to senseless and tragic bloodshed. But the fact of gun ownership and the constitutional right (that historic American constitutional privilege that a late commentator notoriously said made firearm fatalities a necessary cost) is not much emphasized.

Police Interrogation and Firearm Norms

It is possible to watch the officer questioning segments here and feel astonished at how little interest 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? How was the gun kept in her home? Was it just on the couch, loaded and ready? The authorities 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 gun ownership so commonplace it would be like asking about microwaves or bread heaters?

Detention and Consequences

For what appeared to her neighbors 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 parallel, incidentally, with the Gabby Petito case). And when she was ultimately formally arrested in the holding cell, there is an remarkable scene in which Lorincz simply declines to rise, refuses to put her wrists out for the cuffs, 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 closing credits. A deeply sobering picture of U.S. justice and consequences.