for more we are joined by sunita patel, co-counsel on the case. your response to judge scheindlin's ruling? >> it is an astounding victory for everyone in new york city. she has very correctly and barley decided that the city is engaging in racial profiling. it is a victory for so many hundreds of thousands of people who have been illegally stopped and frisked over the past decade. >> to those who say that this is the reason crime is down and that the number of lives that whatbeen same -- saved -- did i hear one pundit say today year.0 murders a that this is a result of racial profiling. thing, there is no empirical evidence linking stop and frisk to crime reduction generally. secondly, this is a tactic that this murder rate reduction in the news -- is a little bit blurry. that is a statistic that spans the course of 15 years. it is not within the time period we are talking about. when mayor bloomberg came into office, the murder rate was already down to a very small number. they are taking credit for something that happened way before them, and t

are supposed to protect them. >> now, one of the things that was interesting to me about your case, sunita, is you actually had a new york officer polanco has blown the whistle on stop and frisk. saying it's all about filling a quota. let me show the public this. >> we're stopping kids walking from school. we stop kids walking upstairs to their house. we're walking kids from going to the stop. kids. young adults. >> in order to keep your activity -- >> in order to keep that quota. >> now, this was a new york city police officer saying that they would stop people anywhere because they had to make a quota. >> that's right. one of the interesting things about our case is whistle blower officers like polanco made our case for us. they said there is a pressure to perform stops and frisks against blacks and latinos. the city says that this is about crime reduction. and it's about going to certain neighborhoods. but the community knows and these officers know the truth. >> you also had an audiotape where they actually identified the commander saying young blacks. so -- and the other thing is, it

. >> sunita, you talked about people having some confidence in the system now. isn't part of what you and the center for constitutional rights saying with this lawsuit is you're undermining the ability of police and community to work together if you've got this racial profiling there where you appear to be the adversaries rather than our allies together fighting these criminal elements? >> that's absolutely right. i mean, what we -- the mayor and the police commissioner talk about this, bringing safety to the community. well say it's actually doing the opposite. it's harming the nypd's ability to work with the community to fight crime. and that is really what is an essential part of community policing. and so here what we have is an opportunity, is the mayor, the police commissioner going to take the court up on this opportunity to join with people who want to bring reform, or are they going to ignore the mountains of evidence and just continue to appeal and waste the resources of the public. >> so you're not here tonight, and neither of the two plaintiffs to gl

we have seema and sunita still with us.dea of changing mandatory minimum sentences. >> well, you're talking about paul gosser, right, who was all up in eric holder's face after fast and furious went down, so he has his own political agenda and motivation. but, generally, it seems that conservatives are pretty happy about it because of the ridiculous amounts of money we'll be saving. >> right, what about prosecutors? in your job, does the idea of discretion change the way you do your job. when you're charging someone with a crime, do you have in the back of your mind, this is a low-level drug dealer, but if i change him with "x," the mandatory minimum kicks in. does that change the way you do your job? >> yes, because now on some level, the prosecutors have some discretion. because the amount of drugs won't be in the charging instrument. so at that point, the prosecutor is left to consider other factors like mission in terms of, is there community service, is there a program. but the prosecutor also has to look at, was the p