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Welcome to Dykstra & Company's News page. 

Our news page offers legal news relating to criminal defence law, including Welcome to our BC criminal defence blog posts about DUI criminal charges, impaired driving, traffic offences, assault charges, spousal assault charges, drug charges, driving prohibitions, fraud charges, and uttering threats charges. 

News Category: All CategoriesDUI / Impaired DrivingDrug ChargesTraffic / Driving OffencesAssaultDykstra & Company AnnouncementsMedicalIn the News...General

DUI / Impaired Driving

• Lawyer claims Chicago officer made false DUI arrests
  Oct 07, 2009

  A Chicago lawyer for a man who was arrested for DUI claims the arresting police officer had no grounds for the DUI arrest.  The lawyer bases the claim on the video footage of the roadside sobriety test performed by the arrested man.  Read the entire lawyer DUI story by Kristen Schorsch in the Chicago Tribune newspaper here.

• Breathalyzer in every car?
  Jul 10, 2009

  In the USA, Congress has a pending bill which would require persons with multiple DUI / impaired convictions to pay for and install interlock systems in their vehicles.  An interlock system is a breathalyzer system which will prevent a vehicle from starting if alcohol is detected.
  
  Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), along with the Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have been influencers in the interlock system push in the USA.
  
  Read more about this in the Time Magazine article "Coming Soon: a Breathalyzer in Every Car".

• Drinking and Driving Still on BC Roads
  May 16, 2009

  Early in 2009 the RCMP in the Okanagan made numerous drunk driving arrests as a result of their anti-drinking and driving campaign.  Check out the PentictonWesternNews.com article Police see no shortage of impaired drivers.

Drug Charges

• Drug Smuggling Trial Wraps Up - Reported in the Abbotsford Times Newspaper
  Nov 14, 2011

  On November 10, 2011 Rochelle Baker of the Abbotsford Times profiled Gordon Dykstra's recent defence of a client charged with drug smuggling.
  
  Read the full Times article titled "Trial wraps for alleged Abby coke smugglers found in berry bushes" here.
  
  In a nutshell, Gordon's client, along with a co-accused, were charged with smuggling $1.2 million worth of cocaine from the USA to Canada.
  
  The defence was that there was no clear inference of guilt that Dykstra's client was in possession of the drugs.
  
  The Honourable Mr. Justice Joyce of the BC Supreme Court will issue his decision on November 24, 2011.

• BC jails overcrowded according to guards
  Aug 14, 2009

  Some British Columbia jail guards report that BC jails totally overcrowded - in some cases have twice as many people for which the jail was built.  In 2002 and 2003 the BC government closed facilities and laid off guards.  Read more about BC jail overcrowding here.

• Taser maker not happy with BC findings
  Aug 14, 2009

  Taser maker is going to court in BC to challenge the BC findings on Taser safety.  Specifically, Taser isn't happy about the "19 recommendations on police use".  These recommendations are a result of the investigation and inquiry on the death of man in Vancouver International airport.  Read more about Taser's challenge here.
  

• 102,000 reported drug offences in 2008 in Canada
  Jul 28, 2009

  The latest Statistics Canada report concludes there were about 102,000 reported drug offences in 2008.  Half of those were the drug charge "possession of cannabis" - a 5 percent increase from 2007.
  
  In 2007, 13 percent of all cannabis offences were for trafficking and 11 percent for production.  60 percent of cannabis production were in a residence, 32 percent in an open field, and 3 percent in a commercial location.
  
  Read the full Statistics Canada Study: Trends in police-reported drug offences here.

• More drug enforcement on the Canada-US border
  Jul 28, 2009

  The U.S. Border Patrol tripled the number of agents along the Canada-US border and will soon use unmanned surveillance aircraft to further monitor the border.
  
  Two drugs Canada exports to the USA are marijuana and ecstasy laced with crystal meth.  In return, cocaine is smuggled into Canada from the USA.  In 2006 5.2 million ecstasy dosage units was seized while cocaine seizures tripled from 2004 to 2006.  Much of the Canada-US border is not patrolled and is very remote making it difficult to stop the cross-border trafficking.
  
  According to Rob Gordon, a criminologist with Simon Fraser University, B.C. marijuana exports is British Columbia's third largest industry behind tourism and logging.
  
  Read more about cross-border drug smuggling between Canada and USA here.

Traffic / Driving Offences

• Time to hang up the cell phones and start paying attention driving
  Jan 07, 2010

  On January 1, 2010 in BC it became illegal to use a handheld device while driving.  If caught, you're looking at a $167 fine.  That's pretty steep, but not nearly as bad as causing a car crash.

Assault

• Client Charged with Assault in BC is Found Not Guilty
  Dec 23, 2011

  After a long and tumultuous ordeal for my client, a prominent Abbotsford man, the Provincial Court of BC found him Not Guilty of assaulting his live-in girlfriend.
  The Abbotsford Times covered the story here.
  





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Gordon J. Dykstra, Abbotsford lawyer, and Jon G. Dykstra, also an Abbotsford lawyer form the law firm Dykstra & Company.  Gordon, a criminal defence lawyer, founded Dykstra & Company in 1982 in Abbotsford, BC.  Since then, our firm expanded with Jon joining in 2006, and then opening an office in Surrey, BC in 2009.

Our legal news page grows as a result of us or our staff read about a news item relating to criminal defence law.  Our news section functions like a mini-blog of sorts, except the news posts are shorter and provide a link directly to the original story.

Please note that sometimes a link to the original story will be lost if the original story's URL is changed.

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