BOSTON -- The Cambridge police sergeant who arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. had eight citizen complaints previously filed against him, according to records released Wednesday by the Cambridge Police Department. Two of the complaints were filed by black men who alleged racial bias.

Crowley was cleared by the department in every case.

The complaints, which were made during Sgt. James Crowley's 11 years with the Cambridge Police Department, were released to NewsCenter 5 in response to a public records request.

Last month, Gates arrest drew national attention and sparked a debate on race relations after he was taken into custody after he tried to open a stuck door at his own Cambridge home on July 16.

Gates and Crowley later met with President Barack Obama to discuss the incident over beers at the White House.

"It is noteworthy that despite Sergeant Crowley's numerous arrests and citations, only eight citizen complaints have been filed against him, which represents less than 1 per cent of his interactions with the public,'' Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas said in a letter that accompanied the release of the records.

Most of the complaints involved allegations that Crowley was rude.

However, in one complaint filed in 1999, Crowley allegedly called a black man in a car a "homeboy" after the driver was ticketed for driving the wrong way down a one-way street. A police investigation in this case, as all others, cleared Crowley of wrongdoing.

In another complaint filed in 2002, a driver and a friend claimed that Crowley wrongly detained them because one matched the suspect of a black man wanted for a video store robbery.

"As a young African-American male, I am especially concerned by the lack of restraint the officers demonstrated in this situation," wrote the driver. "I am curious if the description of 'black male' immediately suspends the rights of all brown skinned individuals within a 10-block radius.''

Crowley, who is on vacation in California, told NewsCenter 5 that he was not concerned about the release of the records.