Loading summary
Transcript30 lines
- [00:08]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Our October get lit with all of it book club event is just about two weeks away. We are reading the latest novel by SA Cosby. The New York Times calls him a maestro of crime fiction. And after devouring the King of Ashes, I have to agree. The story follows a man named Roman Carruthers. He's left his small hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia to become a successful financial advisors to celebrities in Atlanta. But Roman finds himself back at home after he learns that a tragic accident involving his father might not have been an accident at all. In fact, it might have been an act of a retribution from a local gang. And Roman's siblings have found themselves in the crosshairs. Can Roman save his family from this gang? And at what cost? SA Cosby will be joining us for an in person and virtual get lit event on Tuesday, October 28th along with very special musical guest Yaya Bae who will play a special acoustic set for us. This is gonna be live at the New York Public Library at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. To find out how to get your free tickets and to borrow your E copy of King of Ashes thanks to our partners at the NYPL, you can head to wnyc.org that is wnyc.org getlit the event is on October 28th at 6pm and we can't wait to see you there. Now let's get this hour started with the perfect Neighbor. In the new documentary film the Perfect Neighbor, the story of a fatal shooting is told almost entirely through police police body camera footage. Ajika Owens was a mother living with her kids in a tight knit community in Ocala, Florida. Also living nearby was a woman named Susan Lawrence. Lawrence really did not like the sounds of kids playing in an empty lot near her home or really anything else the kids did. Lawrence made multiple complaints to the police and the police told her that there was nothing they could do if the kids weren't trespassing. But Lawrence kept calling the police and calling and sometimes lying. She continued to be, well, a nuisance. Then there's the fact that the kids were mostly black and Lawrence was a white woman. It all changed one night in 2023. Owens went to Lawrence's house. After an altercation with the kids, Lawrence shot her through a locked door. Owens died. Lawrence claimed she felt her life was in danger using the stand your ground defense. The story of how a neighborhood tensions boiled over to violence is told by director Geeta Gandabeer. She won a Directing award for the film at Sundance. The Perfect Neighbor will premiere on Netflix on Friday. And I'm joined now by Geeta. Geeta, nice to meet you.
- [03:09]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:10]
A
We've had you on before. You do great work. You first came to the story as a friend of the Owens family. Would you explain that for us?
- [03:21]
B
Certainly. Ajika Owens was a dear friend of two relatives of mine, Takima Robinson, who is an executive producer on the film, and Kimberly Robinson Jones. Kimberly lived in the community where Ajika lived and she was actually the person who directed Adjika to that street. Kimberly used to live in the house that Ajika was living in when the confrontations with Susan started. And she believed that community was perfect for Ajika and her young children. Again, an idyllic street with close knit neighbors and children again playing freely and watched over by the whole community.
- [04:00]
C
When you put on your documentary filmmaker hat, how did you think about navigating your own position with the point of view while making a documentary?
- [04:11]
B
So what's really interesting is that we initially didn't start out thinking that we were going to make a documentary. As soon as Ajika was murdered, we sprang into action to support the family and to really activate around the media because we were not sure if Susan Lawrence would walk from what she had done. She was not arrested for four days and we wanted to help get the news out into the media, being that we ourselves work in the media and to try to keep the case alive even after Susan's arrest. But basically, two months after we, after the incident, we got our hands on the police body camera footage along with a lot of other files. There was cell phone footage, there was ring camera footage, dashcam footage, detective interviews that happened after the incident, as well as 911 calls. And all of that came to us through the family lawyers. Basically, they had used the Freedom of Information act and gotten the police department, the Marin County Sheriff's Department, I should say, to release any of the files that pertain to the case. So that material was sent to us and we were asked to look through it to see if there was anything that would be useful for the news. But when we, it came to us in a jumble. And I used to be an editor, so I spent a couple of weeks stringing it out into a timeline. It was really challenging to do because there was no sure true organization to it and sort of figuring out the chronology. But it was both detective work and grief work for me. It was a way to process. And once I had it out Strung out in a timeline. We realized that the material went back two years. And this is something we never see. And when there is a crime, we often only see the direct aftermath. We, particularly with gun violence you might see, which happens unfortunately every week. We see the grieving family, we see the funeral, but you don't get to see the lead up. And for us, that's when we realized there might be a bigger story here and possibly a film.
- [06:21]
A
When you looked at all of this footage, what was something that surprised you when you saw it?
- [06:27]
B
I think what was incredible to me about the footage was how immersive it was. Again, this is footage that was never meant to be used for the purpose we are using it for. But what was so astonishing was how we got to see the community as they were before. Again, the police came into the community multiple times and some of the calls that they were on lasted for an hour, some two hours, some longer. And we got to see this beautiful community living together, taking care of each other, a really tight social network. And again, it's a diverse community that we got to see the children playing freely in the street, just being themselves because we were not on the ground, right, With a camera being intrusive, directing anything. Again, they are of course talking to, they're interacting with the police, but they feel in a way, because the camera is so innocuous, the body camera for the police, they often are being themselves fully. And we really wanted to paint a picture with this footage of this community. Again, oftentimes when crimes happen to us as people of color, we are criminalized or somehow there is a question of how, you know, how was this our fault, Right? And so with this footage, we wanted to be able to paint a picture of this community as they were. And the children, again, you cannot adultify them in this footage. They are definitely children. And how that was all disrupted ultimately by one person and their access to.
- [08:00]
A
Again, my guest is director Geeta Gandabeer. We're discussing her new documentary, the Perfect Neighbor, about a neighborhood dispute turned fatal. It premieres on Netflix on Friday. What do we know about Susan Lawrence and her life before the shooting?
- [08:17]
B
So honestly, not much. Susan told many stories about her life, but as far as being able to fact check them, there were certain things we could. She was a member of church of her church. There were again, perhaps the places she lived. But the rest of it was not something that honestly we. That. That the. The material got into that we were given that much. Nor was it something to be honest, that we thought was that Relevant to the. To the. The situation because ultimately it was about her behavior in the current situation and what it led up to.
- [09:00]
A
It was very interesting just to.
- [09:02]
C
Like you said, you get to watch her before this all happens.
- [09:05]
A
And she's.
- [09:06]
C
She's sort of just obsessed with. About the kids in the neighborhood and playing on the lot and what they do with their dogs and just everything to do with the kids. She goes down to the police station to report something she has no evidence for. What do you make of her determination to keep filing these reports?
- [09:26]
B
I think Susan tried to weaponize her race and privilege against the community. I think she was absolutely irritated by the noise that the children make. And I'm not going to say that children are not noisy. I used to live next to a high school, and I will say, and I love, loved them, but they were noisy. But I think that's just a factor that you have to take into consideration when you move into the neighborhood. It's. What's interesting is there's the police eventually tire of her.
- [09:56]
C
It is interesting. They truly get tired of getting calls from her.
- [10:00]
B
They do, because there is no criminal justification for her calls. And I think one of them says to the other in one of the conversations, there's a certain point where you have to just, you know, come to terms with the fact that you live around a bunch of kids, you know, And I want to point out that the yard they were playing in, which was next door to Susan's house, belonged to Susan's neighbor, and they had permission to be there. So there was actually a father who lived in that house whose child is one of the children who ran around the neighborhood playing, you know, playing football, playing games with the other kids, and he would coach football games with them on his own lawn. So really, Susan taking up issue with the children seems very misguided. If anything, maybe you talk to the adult next door, right, who's hosting these kids. But her sort of rage at children, who, as you can see in the footage, are mostly under 12, seems incredibly misplaced and frankly, strange.
- [11:03]
C
We get to see the cops in action. What did you observe about the way the police force engaged with this issue? This woman in the street who keeps calling about the kids on the street.
- [11:16]
B
So what is fascinating about the role of the police, again, they are. They are the ones who are filming all of these interactions. And, you know, what we know is that police body camera footage is often a violent tool of the state that where the police come into vulnerable communities and the body camera footage is sort of used to criminalize people of color or to dehumanize them, et cetera. I think what we wanted to do with this body camera footage, but however, what the police caught, though unintentionally in this body camera footage is the incredible humanity and the beauty and of, of this neighborhood. It was all unintentional. But that's something that we wanted to showcase. We wanted to subvert the, the normal use of body camera footage in the making of this film by showcasing some of what they, they inadvertently captured and again show the community as they were. And, and I think the police themselves, again, I believe they came into the community well intentioned, but what we see tragically is that they failed. The policing system ultimately did not protect the community and they did not see Susan as a threat. And she was a threat because of her access to dangerous weapons. But they never caught onto that. They just treated her as a nuisance and she made sure, again, I just want to repeat, to weaponize her race and her privilege against her mostly black neighbors, calling the police again and again on a community of color is incredibly dangerous and puts them in great danger just because of how, how the police often treat people of color, which is to immediately criminalize them.
- [13:10]
A
Something I thought was. Something I thought was interesting in the, in the body camera footage, and it's, it's subtle, is there's a black officer and she talks to the members of the community a little bit differently than the white officer.
- [13:27]
B
Indeed she does. And she recognizes what she's up against when with again, Ajika, who doesn't challenge the white police officer who's in that scene because she knows that it could put her in harm's way if she does. When he says he talks to her about trespassing, she knows that the yard across the street is a place that children have permission to be. But he sort of speaks to her in a somewhat hostile way and she takes the cue and just steps back and doesn't challenge him. And I think so. We see again, we cannot forget that the residents are speaking to police and so their behavior is going to be affected by that. But again, for the most part, the body camera footage is otherwise undeniable. Right? We believe that again, because we were not on the ground, that the body camera footage shows exactly what happened and it shows both sides. And Susan, I want to say too, just want to add that we also feel that the police, again, they failed the community and they failed Ajika because the worst possible outcome happened, which is Ajica is dead. Again, they never told the community they could file harassment charges against Susan. They could get a protective order. They could. There's so many things that they could have done. And they also never took. They never flagged Susan as someone who was abusing her access to emergency services. They never warned her. And they just treated her as a nuisance and eventually, I think, possibly ignored her. She complained they didn't come out to her calls, and that made her. She was emboldened by stand your ground laws. She took matters into her own hands and now her life is ruined. Now she is in prison, ostensibly for 25 years and again, so it's a terrible outcome on both sides.
- [15:22]
C
It's interesting. It's a diverse community. Many of the kids on the street are black. There's white families as well. Susan is white. And it's interesting. Well, it's expected, frankly. Susan admits calling her neighborhoods the N word. Were you surprised to just see her say, yeah, I said it on tape.
- [15:43]
B
By the time she admitted to it, and she was. It was during her interrogation that that comes up with the two detectives who had again, she had been at least brought in. And then she was being questioned, I believe, for a second time. At that point, frankly, she had already shot Ajica through a locked door. So nothing surprised me. And we also hear, heard from the neighbors about the ways that she would abuse the children, hate speech against them. The children said it themselves. But the children are so polite, they don't say the words they say. She calls us the R word, the P word. To this day, I don't know what the P word is, but they, you know, the children. The children spell out the curses. She called me a J, a Jack, a s. You know, they are incredibly polite to anyone who questions them and again, and respectful in that way. So I would say that no, at that point, I feel like we'd already seen who Susan was, so it didn't surprise me that much.
- [16:49]
C
My guest is director Geeta Gandhi Bear. We're talking about her new documentary, the Perfect Neighbor, about a neighborhood dispute that turns fatal. It premieres on Netflix on Friday. Susan stood on the stand your ground law in Florida. Would you remind our listeners what that actually means?
- [17:10]
B
Sure. So the stand your ground laws exist, and it's again, under the casel doctrines. The stand your ground laws exist in the US in approximately 38 states and again in different forms because the state decides the tenets of the law on a state by state basis. And so in some places, someone has to trespass onto your property and you. The law basically says that you are Allowed to defend yourself without retreating. If you are in. Have a well founded fear that your life is in danger. That if you then and it does not, again depending on the state, it does not require you to retreat. Susan, I believe was essentially once the police stopped responding to her and it became clear to her that they weren't going to take the actions against the community that she wanted them to. There is a scene where they. An officer asks her, she's in the precinct, you know, do you want something to happen to them? Do you want them charged? He says something to that effect. And she says yes. Like she believes what they are doing is criminal or. Or which is being kids and playing next door. And after that, I think her decision to take matters into her own hands led her to research Stand, you'd ground the police, ask her later if she had done that. She denies it. And then it turns out she was, you know, looking it up on her computer. And again, her defense, where she keeps talking about how she was in fear of her life, she thought Ajika was going to kill her. She repeats it over and over, despite the fact that she had a locked metal front door between her and Ajika and she had an extra layer of protection, she could have gone into her bedroom or her bathroom and locked the door and wait. She had already called the police and they were on her way. And so this is, this is sort of an example of. It is not sort of. It is indeed an example of what we see when people are emboldened by laws like stand your ground to commit a crime and complain and claim self defense after. And we saw this in the case of Trayvon Martin. That is likely one of the most famous cases where the perpetrator got off. So it's unfortunate that this law exists.
- [19:26]
C
Final question. In one of the most devastating moments of the film, we see the children being told that their mother is not going to come home from the hospital. Why did you decide to show it? Yeah, why did you decide to show that?
- [19:44]
B
Sure. So when we went to Pamela Dyas, who's Ajika's mother, at the beginning of this one, I realized there was a film. I first asked her did she want me to make a film. I have no other skills between us. I had nothing else to offer. So that is, you know, that's what I knew how to do and I believed we could do with the material we had. I asked her if she wanted me to do this or if it was too painful and if she wanted to move on. And she said, no, I want you to do it. And she takes a lot of strength from Mamie Till, Emmett Till's mother, who had an open casket funeral for her son who was lynch, because she wanted the world to know what happened to her baby. And she invited reporters in and had them take pictures which were shared again around the world. She believed that bearing witness was critical to making change. And Pamela is of the same mindset. And we talked about the fact that there are really painful things in the footage. There were this terrible, heartbreaking imagery. And she said, no, keep it in. The world needs to know. That's the only way that we can maybe motivate change. And I would say we also talk about the video of George Floyd that circulated around the world and created a groundswell and a movement. Her hope is that Ajika's death can mean something, that it won't be in vain, and that by asking the audiences to bear witness with us and share in the grief, that they will also be called to take action.
- [21:27]
A
The film is called the Perfect Neighbor. It premieres on Netflix this Friday. It's an important watch. My guest has been director Geeta Gandpir. Geeta, thank you so much for your time.
- [21:38]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [21:40]
C
Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.