September 2022

An investigation is underway after Surrey RCMP say a group of men “swarmed” an officer’s police cruiser in the Strawberry Hill area of Surrey earlier this month, although a number of witnesses claim the situation was instigated by the officer.

The incident was captured on several videos filmed by members of the public at Surrey’s Strawberry Hill Plaza on Sept. 11, just after 9 p.m., when a confrontation took place between a group of South Asian men and the police officer.

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Kyla Lee, a Vancouver-based criminal lawyer, says the Surrey RCMP officer’s conduct seen in the videos concerned her. 

“The way that the papers were thrown at the person that he was serving the papers to is far below the standard of professionalism that we expect, and more concerning than that was the very dangerous maneuver the officer made when he pulled out of the parking spot.”

Read the full story here.

The decision to provide a day off to public sector workers in B.C. on Monday to coincide with the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II is having unintended consequences.

The national holiday means ICBC appointments and court cases will need to be rescheduled. British Columbia announced on Wednesday plans to give all public sector workers and Crown corporation workers the day off.

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“I was very disappointed to hear that the courthouses would need to be shut down to mark the passing of the Queen. There are a lot of matters across the province that have been scheduled for a long time and this will have a domino effect on future cases. Each case that has to be rescheduled for Monday is going to push out another case that needs to be moved in order to accommodate the rescheduling of Monday’s hearings”

Watch the full news story here.

Criminal lawyers Kyla Lee of Vancouver and William Jaksa of Toronto say that while a man’s verbal assault on Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in Alberta last week doesn’t meet the legal definition of uttering threats, he could be open to charges of harassment and causing a disturbance.

“From a legal perspective, I don’t see the behaviour as being threatening within the criminal definition… From a personal perspective and as a woman who’s also public-facing, I could easily see how somebody would feel threatened in that situation and what the law should do, is it should protect people who feel threatened in situations like that and not protect people from these incidents that are on the rise…”

Watch the story here.