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

The real-life crime genre 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, sometimes in the harsh glare of vehicle beams or flashlights as the police arrive, their expressions and tones expressing caution or fear or anger or suspiciously contrived innocence. And we often catch sight of the expressions of the officers themselves, one waiting impassively while the other conducts the inquiry with what occasionally seems like remarkable hesitation – though maybe this is because they are aware they are being recorded.

A Growing Trend in Documentary Filmmaking

We have previously seen the Netflix true-crime documentary The Gabby Petito Case, 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 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 woman of colour whose children reportedly bothered and antagonized her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. In 2023, after an escalating series of neighborhood conflicts in which the police were repeatedly called, the accused shot Owens dead through her closed front door, when Owens went to the neighbor's residence to address her about hurling items at her children.

The Police Inquiry and Legal Context

The arresting officers found proof that Lorincz had done internet searches into the state's self-defense statutes, which permit residents and others to shoot if there is a reasonable belief of danger. The documentary constructs its narrative with the officer recordings captured during the multiple officer calls to the scene before the shooting, and then at the horrific and chaotic crime scene itself – introduced by emergency call recordings of the caller 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 documentary does not really suggest anything too complicated about Lorincz, or any extenuating circumstance. She is clearly unstable, although the kids are heard calling her a derogatory term, an hurtful taunt. The film is presented as an example of how self-defense regulations generate unnecessary and heartbreaking violence. But the reality of gun ownership and the second amendment (that longstanding U.S. legal right that a deceased pundit famously claimed made firearm fatalities a price worth paying) is not much highlighted.

Police Interrogation and Gun Culture

It is feasible to watch the police interrogation scenes here and feel surprised 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? 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 could have inquired in footage that didn’t make the edit). Or is gun ownership so normal it would be like asking about microwaves or toasters?

Detention and Consequences

For what seemed to her local residents a very long time, the suspect was not even arrested and charged, only detained and even provided accommodation away from home for the night (another parallel, incidentally, with the a prior incident). 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 aggressively, but with the politely self-pitying air 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?

Final Outcome and Judgment

It didn’t; and the panel's decision is revealed in the closing credits. A very sombre picture of American crime and punishment.