IN CANADA, THE POLICE CANNOT DISPARAGE THE DEFENCE LAWYER TO THEIR CLIENT – A recent Ontario drug trafficking case has collapsed after a judge found a police officer acted improperly by repeatedly disparaging defence counsel as a “gangster lawyer” who charged “crazy” fees. “To suggest that any lawyer is a ‘gangster lawyer’ is an attack not just on that lawyer but potentially all criminal defence lawyers — and that is simply wrong,” Justice Mark Edwards, the Senior Regional Judge for the Central East Region, wrote in his reasons for staying an alleged drug trafficker’s charges. Nor did the lawyer do anything to warrant the label “gangster lawyer,” he continued.