Out of the almost 690,000 searches that took place, the basis for 146,003 was that an officer observed what they took to be contraband. However, it appears that officers are frequently mistaken in these observations. In fact, 47 percent of the time these searches fail to recover any contraband at all. When officers are correct and do find contraband only 22 percent of the time does it lead to an arrest. And again, we observe a racial difference: officers are mistaken in their observations 44 percent of the time when searching white motorists and 49 percent of the time when searching blacks.
