I had heard nothing at all about the new Netflix documentary The Perfect Neighbor when I ran across it the other evening and decided to give it a watch.
As far as true-crime documentaries go, it’s pretty good… right up until the last ten minutes or so, when the film suddenly veers into a flawed attack on Stand Your Ground laws.
The Perfect Neighbor primarily uses bodycam footage recorded by deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, who were repeatedly called out to a neighborhood in Ocala, Florida over a period of a couple of years by a woman named Susan Lorincz, who took issue with kids playing in a vacant lot next to her home.
Tensions between Lorincz and her neighbors escalated over those calls and Lorincz’s assertions that the neighborhood kids were trespassing on her property, being disrespectful, and harassing her. Things came to a head in June, 2023 when Lorincz fatally shot neighbor Ajike “AJ” Owens, a mother of four who allegedly came over to Lornicz’s home and banged on her door while threatening to kill her.
Lorincz wasn’t immediately arrested for Owens’ death, in large part because she claimed that she was acting in self-defense; firing a shot through the door of her own because she had a legitimate fear that her life was in danger. Four days after the shooting, though, Lorincz was taken into custody and formally charged.
Though Lorincz claimed that she was acting in self-defense, the Marion County Sheriff’s investigation found that she was acting outside the scope of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, and a jury convicted Lorincz of manslaughter in 2024. She is currently serving a 25-year sentence, which is pretty strong evidence that the law is not a “license to murder,” as some critics have claimed. Still, the documentary’s producer Alisa Payne makes no bones about the fact that she made the film with the intent of raising support for repealing Stand Your Ground laws; not just in Florida, but in the vast majority of states across the country where there is no duty to retreat before acting in self-defense.
Laws like this one now exist in one form or another in more than half of the states in the US, but it was Florida’s that attracted the utmost scrutiny after Zimmerman’s acquittal in 2013. A decade later, the killing of Owens ignited a similar nationwide probing of the catastrophic and problematic laws that disproportionately affect Black people. “Hopefully through [Owens’s] legacy we can fight ‘stand your ground’ and other harmful policies,” says Payne. “It was very apparent on the other side of [Susan’s] calls, there were these great people. These are people who are parents raising their children.”
Based on the bodycam footage that makes up the vast majority of the documentary, it’s clear that Lorincz was far from the perfect neighbor, as she described herself to deputies who responded to one of her repeated 911 calls. None of Lorincz’s neighbors comes to her defense in the footage, and even deputies express exasperation with her anger over loud kids at play.
It’s also clear from Lorincz’s own statements to police that she didn’t have reason to believe her life was in danger. She claims that Owens was threatening to kill her when she fired the shot, but Lorincz was safely behind a locked door and had been told just two minutes before that deputies were on their way to her home after she called 911 to report Owens was outside. And arguably, the only reason why Owens was there was because Lorincz had allegedly thrown a roller skate at one of her sons, and then swung an umbrella at the 10-year-old and his 12-year-old brother when they knocked on her door to ask why she had done so.
After Lorincz was convicted, the attorney for Owens’ mother told the press that “not only was Susan Lorincz on trial today, but so was ‘stand your ground’ and how that’s defined,” adding, “I think we made one step closer with case law and defining what ‘stand your ground’ actually means.”
Thomas continued: “No, you cannot claim to be in fear of your life. No, you can’t bait the police by telling them you’re in fear for your life over the phone to make sure they hurry up and get there.”
All of which is true, but also, all of which is clearly laid out in statute. In order for someone to have reasonable belief that their life is in danger while they’re inside their own home the following conditions must be met:
a) The person against whom the defensive force was used or threatened was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle, or if that person had removed or was attempting to remove another against that person’s will from the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle; and
(b) The person who uses or threatens to use defensive force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful and forcible act was occurring or had occurred.
Ajike Owens wasn’t trying to forcibly enter Lorincz’s home. She was banging on the door and demanding Lorincz come out.
Despite Payne’s intention, her film shows that Stand Your Ground laws are not a license to murder.
Look, people claim to act in self-defense all the time, even when that’s not true. As far as I’m concerned, that’s exactly what happened here. Lorincz’s actions aren’t an indictment of Stand Your Ground laws. They’re an indictment of her own casual disregard for the lives of those around her. That’s the real horror of The Perfect Neighbor, not a statute that allows individuals to protect themselves without retreating when someone forcibly enters their home with violent intent.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
Help us continue to report the truth about the Schumer Shutdown. Use promo code POTUS47 to get 74% off your VIP membership.
Read the full article here
