The Perfect Neighbor Review: Examining a Infamous Incident Via the Perspective of a Florida Officer's Body-Cam

The true crime category has a new medium, or perhaps even a completely fresh vocabulary and structure: officer-worn camera recordings. Faces of victims, observers and potential offenders appear suddenly to the cameras, at times in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or torches as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing caution or fear or indignation or suspiciously contrived innocence. 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 extraordinary diffidence – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

An Emerging Pattern in Documentary Filmmaking

We have already had the streaming service real-life crime film The Gabby Petito Case, about the killing of an Instagram influencer by her boyfriend, whose main point of interest was officer recordings and in which, as in this film, the law enforcement seemed surprisingly lenient with the perpetrator. There is also Bill Morrison’s Oscar-nominated short Incident, made exclusively of officer footage. Now comes a new film by Geeta Gandbhir about the tragic incident of Ajike Owens in Ocala, Florida, a African American woman whose four young kids allegedly harassed and antagonized her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an increasing number of neighborhood conflicts in which the police were repeatedly called, the accused shot Owens dead through her locked 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 evidence that Lorincz had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which permit residents and others to shoot if there is a significant presumption of threat. The documentary constructs its narrative with the body cam footage generated during the multiple officer calls to the location before the shooting, and then at the disturbing and disordered crime scene itself – introduced by emergency call recordings of the caller calling the police in a dramatically trembling voice. There is also jail video of Lorincz which has a disturbing, unsettling appeal.

Depiction of the Suspect

The documentary does not really imply anything too complicated about Lorincz, or any extenuating circumstance. She is clearly unstable, although the children are heard calling her a derogatory term, an hurtful taunt. The production is showcased as an example of how self-defense regulations lead to senseless and tragic bloodshed. But the fact of gun ownership and the second amendment (that historic American constitutional privilege that a deceased pundit famously claimed made gun deaths a necessary cost) is not much highlighted.

Officer Questioning and Firearm Norms

It is feasible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel surprised at how little interest the officers took in this aspect. When did she buy her gun? Where (if anywhere) did she train in its use? 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 authorities aren’t shown asking any of these surely relevant questions (though they could have inquired in footage that were not included). Or is possessing a firearm so commonplace it would be like asking about microwaves or bread heaters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her neighbors a very long time, the suspect was not even arrested and charged, only detained and even offered a hotel stay away from home for the night (another point of comparison, 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 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 might actually work?

Conclusion and Verdict

It was not successful; and the panel's decision is revealed in the closing credits. A deeply sobering picture of American crime and punishment.