Ex-Minneapolis Chief Bouza is often a witness in lawsuits against cops

For eight years in the 1980s, Chief Tony Bouza presided over the Minneapolis Police Department, a quotable, in-your-face police official with strong opinions who was brought here as a reformer by Mayor Don Fraser.

A former assistant chief in the New York Police Department, Bouza frequently butted heads with members of the Minneapolis force.

Since his retirement he has become even more irascible. For most of the past quarter century, he has been a witness for the defense across the country, testifying in lawsuits, some of them major cases, on behalf of people who have alleged wrongdoing by police officers.

Bouza, now in his 80s and still living in Minneapolis, has published a new book entitled “Expert Witness: Breaking the Policemen’s Blue Code of Silence,” which tells story after story of alleged deceit, misconduct and corruption by police.

A prolific writer of nine previous books, he said in an interview that his new tome is “my most important book,” describing it as “my continuing and futile attempt to reform the police.”

He calls police departments “secret institutions very much like the Vatican” who have “a great time exercising power.” He says that while departments do a lot of good things, they are institutionally assigned “to control the underclass,” most vividly reflected in their relationship to blacks, who he says are targets of stop-and-frisk and other abuses.

He said in most of the cases where he testified, it was on behalf of abused blacks “who screwed up their courage and sued.”

In an epilogue, Bouza writes that he owes an apology to most cops because 98 percent of them are doing — or trying to do — their job, work ranging from mediocre to heroic and brilliant.

“But then there are the 2-percenters,” he writes. “I could actually prepare a list of these misfits in every agency I have worked. The thumpers, grafters, malingerers, psychos, alcoholics, women beaters and bullies are the objects of my reform efforts.”

He is, say most attorneys who sue police, a rare bird, since there are hardly any big city police chiefs who have so consistently testified against police.

Fred Goetz, a Minneapolis attorney, says he can count on one hand “the individuals with Mr. Bouza’s level of experience who objectively review cases of alleged police misconduct and call it as they see it. ...

“Chief Bouza is unique in that he only does cases he believes in. He is not a hired gun. If he does not believe in a case, if he does not believe there is a serious civil rights violation, he won’t take it.”

Bouza can say things that will get him in hot water. During his tenure as Minneapolis chief, he was ridiculed for saying there was no gang problem in the city, even as gangs began to materialize — a comment he later said was a mistake.

Still, Bouza has intense admirers. “With all due respect to Minneapolis, he should have ended up heading the police departments of one of the giant cities, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, to show what he could do,” says Thomas Repetto, former president of the Citizens Crime Commission in New York City. “I like to say he is the greatest police commissioner New York City never had.”

Among the cases Bouza worked on was a 2003 rally in Chicago against U.S. intervention in Iraq, which led to 543 arrests. Bouza calls it a “a police-inspired debacle.” The city of Chicago agreed to pay $6.2 million in a settlement.

Bouza wrote that “the most important case I worked on” involved the indictment of two “tree-huggers,” environmental activists who were campaigning against the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest. Bouza testified after they were arrested in 1990 on eco-terrorism charges, which Bouza said was wrongheaded. They won $2.9 million from a jury.

You might think Bouza is a softy who cuddles up to protesters — after all, he became a national story in the 1980s when his wife, Erica Bouza, was arrested several times by Bouza’s own police force when she participated in peaceful civil disobedience demonstrations against Honeywell and its military contracts. But Bouza’s values are not simplistic and can be rather startling.

“I am an unapologetic supporter of the use of police violence, even lethal force,” he writes in a preface, “but it has to be guided by the law, the standards of reasonableness and the U.S. Constitution.

“I have presided over clubbings, shootings, gassings and other assaults by the police. I see violence as a key weapon in the police arsenal and trained cops in the full range of possibilities available to us.

“My only caveat is that the use of force has to be legally justified, measured and appropriate, and that the weapons have to be in conformance with the law.”

SWAT officer is a big winner

A Minneapolis police SWAT officer has won $10,000 for himself and $100,000 of equipment for the Minneapolis Police Department’s SWAT unit, beating 13 other SWAT officers in a televised competition on the Outdoor Channel cable television network.

Tony Caspers, a 24-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, was declared the winner last week of a reality television series called ETU, which stands for Elite Tactical Unit. The episodes will re-air on the Outdoor Channel next month.

Caspers, 45, of Blaine, and the other officers from around the United States battled drug kingpins and returned pretend gunfire in a series of make-believe scenarios that included raiding houses and rescuing hostages. The officers used laser guns rather than live ammunition. The episodes were filmed in Arkansas, Missouri and New Hampshire.

Caspers was a last-minute replacement in the competition. In the final, he competed against a SWAT officer from Dallas. Mitch Petrie, an assistant producer, said he hosted a large party recently at a New Hope firearm training facility, Sealed Mindset, where Casper’s friends, family, other officers and sponsors watched.

Source: startribune.com
For Minneapolis web design service, please call (612) 590-8080

6 Mistakes People Often Make When Choosing a Web Designer

Many web design service providers have popped up in the last five years. In some ways, this has made it tougher for people to find high-quality, experienced web designers. You’ll find many different styles, skills, prices, and abilities among web designers. In order to get a professional website developed and designed for your organization, you should seek one with a solid, proven track record to take on your project. Here are 6 things you should avoid when selecting a web design firm for your project:

  1. Choosing a web designer who is still using old HTML code to build websites: Today, in order for your website show up uniformly on newer versions of internet browsers, computer operating systems, and mobile devices; your website needs to be built with the most up-to-date coding; HTML5 or newer. It would be a major pain in the neck (and wallet) to have to re-design your website after you’ve worked hard to develop a new site with a designer who uses outdated code.
  2. Choosing a web designer who suggests using a lot of flash content on your site: Since Apple computers and mobile devices do not support Flash, your Flash website will not display fully when Apple users pull up your website on their devices. It is un-wise for any web designers to suggest using significant amounts of Flash on client’s websites.
  3. Using a template for your website: Most of us have tried our best to come up with a unique name for our organization to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. So it makes sense to do the same, and create a unique website to establish your online web presence. It is not a wise move to choose a website template, which has been duplicated and re-sold thousands of times online, as your organization’s online identity.
  4. Use your cousin’s friend, or your friend’s cousin, to design your site: I have encountered a number of clients who started out their web design project with someone they knew personally or through family. Usually the idea is that working with someone you know will save you money. This situation often ends up with a half-baked website that doesn’t meet the client’s expectations, or the project drags on for way too long. I am a big believer in the power of referrals, but you should research carefully to make sure you hire a web designer who can handle your project. Research includes viewing the designer’s work portfolio, reading their past clients’ testimonials, and reviewing their web design prices. Referrals are great, but you need to do your homework to pick out a qualified website designer.
  5. Choose the cheapest web designer to design your site: If you are looking for website designers that can meet your expectations, do not let price be the only criteria in your selection process, no matter how tight your budget is. It’d be better for you to work out some kind of re-payment plan with a qualified web designer or wait until you can save up enough money to design your site. Paying money for a poorly designed and developed site will cost you more time, and money, in the long run. When a designer says that s/he will take on your project for 1/5 the price of other web design quotes from other web design companies, you should question whether that designer really knows what kind of project s/he is getting into.
  6. Choose a web designer who does not have a service agreement contract in place: Quite often new clients come to me frustrated because their previous designer told them that they do not own the domain and/or the website which they had paid for a number of years ago when they hired their previous web designer to set everything up for them. When that designer built the website and registered the domain for the client in the beginning, there was no service agreement contract in place that stated that the client owns these properties. Now, when the client decides to leave, the designer claims that the client merely rented everything from the designer, and that client does not own anything. You can avoid this by always asking whether your prospective web designer has a service agreement contract in place for you, as a client. Most importantly, ask him/her if anywhere in the contract states that you own a copyright of your website design and your selected website domain name. Only when you have a copy of the signed contract in your hands should you go forward with the project.

There are other “red flags” you should watch out for when choosing a web designer, but above are 6 major and common mistakes to avoid. For more information on what makes a website a “professional grade” website, please go to http://www.proweb365.com/10-tips-professional-grade-website.

How to Customize and Manage Your E-commerce Website for Maximum Results

Since your E-commerce website is the first way customers will learn about your business, you should customize it intelligently to capture viewers’ attention, and persuade them to buy or refer your products to their family and friends (either through email or social media). When “potential customers” land on your website, within 60 seconds they should know what you sell, and why they should buy it from you. To achieve this, you’ll definitely want a professional web design firm to custom build your E-commerce website based on both your products and services, and your business’ needs, at every level. From the look of your site to how it functions, your website should provide a positive, user-friendly experience. No one likes websites that are unattractive or are hard to use, and not only that; people’s attention spans and patience are short as they browse websites.

Besides people, search engine spiders are also a key audience for you online. In order to crawl and index your website (periodically), search engine spiders need to be able to read your website easily. This is one more reason why it’s very important that you have a professional web designer custom build your website, with clean code that allows spiders to crawl your site thoroughly. A poorly designed and coded website can be a revenue killer for an E-commerce business.

Even if “potential customers” are impressed with your website the first time they visit, your job does not end there. You have to create a smart navigation structure, (especially on your HOME page) to entice customers to delve deeply into your product’s detail pages. This means your product’s detail pages should be set up to both showcase your products attractively, and to position related or complementary products nearby as well. This allows you to easily up-sell your products. It’s important to make your potential sales pages both very easy to navigate, and information-rich, so they provide any information customers might want to know about your products, quickly.

Today, many E-commerce businesses often mistake “leads” for “sales” which leads to lost potential revenue. Your site should be designed to take your “potential leads” all the way to your product-detail-pages and keep them there. Smart marketing messages and promotions can entice your “potential leads” to purchase, and prominent “call-to-action” buttons (“buy now” buttons) can help you convert sales more quickly. Most importantly, make it as simple and painless as possible for potential customers to pay you online. Your end goal is, of course, to turn as many leads, into direct sales, and these details are all important to reach that goal.

To provide a better experience on your E-Commerce website and to increase revenue, you should learn as much as you can about your customers. From their demographics, to where they were just prior to landing on your site, to how they behave on your site. This information will provide insightful feedback to help you tailor your website layout, functions and products to your customers’ needs. Here are two tools you can use to gain insightful knowledge about your customers:

1) Google Analytics:  This is a powerful tool that not only allows you to measure your site’s traffic, it also lets you know where each of your visitors came from. This will help you to better market your business to customers based on their location, culture, or even language. Google Analytics is a free tool and provides many insightful reports.

2) CrazyEgg. This tool allows you to see how customers behave on your website. CrazyEgg’s “Heat-Map” reports show which page or section of a page customers visited and where they clicked on your site. It also shows which sites your visitors came from such as Facebook, Twitter, Google.com, Bing.com, Yahoo.com, etc. These reports can help inform your decisions on how to layout your webpages to best meet your customers’ needs. It also helps you decide which websites you may want to invest more in, based on who brings the most referral traffic to your site. CrazyEgg is a paid tool, but for only about $9 per month, it is well worth all the feedback you’ll get on how customers behave on your site.

To effectively market your business to customers online, and to successfully convert new leads to sales, these are critical steps to take while developing and establishing your E-commerce website. If you need professional assistance to get started or want to learn more about our E-commerce web design prices, contact our Minneapolis web design firm at: (612) 590-8080.

Why We Should Hire Professional Web Design Firm

You need to build up a new website for your business. Therefore, you have to looking for web designers or web design firm. Most of the time, web design cost is one of important factors that effect to your decision directly. You have great idea and have narrowed it down to some web design companies. Now what? Give web designers what you want to do. However, which web designer can handle your tasks effectively? Let me share with you why we should hire professional web design firm.

In my point of view, web designing is an art. Every form of art has its own target audience. Therefore, the artists are very creative; they blend their creativity and imagination beautifully to come up with unique artifacts that will surely catch the imagination of the audience; same goes with professional web designer they need to understand their client's needs and objective, using their experience innovative ideas and imagination they come out with a unique concept that does wonders to the client business, and that is eventually what the client is looking for.

When you are starting a business, you put very much effort and capital into achieves goal eventually that is profit. In this competitive business scenario, having a very strong online presence is must for the success of the business. People today don't have time to go visit shops, but they do have technology at their hand in the form of tablets, laptops, mobiles phones that help them to visit any online store at any time of the day to get things they want. The customers have certain expectations when it comes to online site. It should be quick to load, attractive, give all value information about the product/service. If they don't get all these at once place within a fraction of second, they will navigate to the related website. Designing a website requires lots of things to be taken care of, and this is the only web designer can do. Therefore, choosing a professional designing company is a better option than going for individual designers because in companies, there is a pool of designers and other professionals.

When you approach a professional web designing company first they will understand what exactly you want - you just have to give them complete information about your business it includes the nature of business, product, goals, target audience, age group. Based on the information the work is allotted to a specific project manager who has a team of web designers. They do extensive research & brainstorming to come up with a unique design.

A professional web designing company gladly would provide you all the necessary information and related documents to make sure you are left with no doubts. These companies hire certified web designer who are not only skilled and expert in web designing but also have innovative ideas that help them to come up with effective and unique ways to make a quick impact on the customer. The professional companies have project managers who constantly keep in contact with the client and update them about the status. Further they also find out if any addition that has to be done from the client’s point of view; this continuous process goes till the website is uploaded and live. Besides, professional companies have standard packages that will suit your business needs. They may list their web design price on the website, so you can do the price comparisons online. Depending on what you opt these packages encompasses of website designing services, email design services, or social networking page customization, the company might or might not offer such package. So you need to do a research regarding packages.

In conclusion, with the majority of consumers using the Internet for information they need, position your business online with a website is the most cost-effective promotion you will ever invest in. For affordable web design cost, you should look for web design companies that are willing to list their web design prices right on the websites. These companies often price fairly and it also allows you to compare prices among different web design companies without filling out a request form and have to wait for days (if not weeks) for a web design quote to come. Keep in mind that professional web design firm should be the best choice for your website.

Man shot dead in S. Minneapolis apartment; no arrest made

A man was found shot to death before dawn Monday in a south Minneapolis home, and police said they are looking for the killer.

The shooting occurred shortly before 4:30 a.m. in an apartment in the 2800 block of Cedar Avenue South, police said.

Emergency medical personnel called to the scene took the man to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he died, said police Sgt. William Palmer. The man’s identity has yet to be released.

No arrests have been made. Police are asking that anyone with information in the case call investigators at 612-642-TIPS (6477).

 

Paul Walsh