PROVIDENCE — When an auto body shop employee showed up at the city Department of Communications with a portable police radio in hand, chief radio engineer Tony Desmarais was immediately suspicious.

“[The visitor] said he bought it from some guy on a corner and [he asked] could you turn it on, it’s not working,” recalled Joseph McGarry, city deputy director of communications.

But there was a big problem. It was one of the city’s new digital radios worth more than $2,500, and it had been reported missing.

There also was a good reason that it was not working: The city had disabled the radio remotely by using a feature of the digital communications system.

A criminal investigation ensued, and as a result, the police have charged Robin Evans, a building maintenance foreman who oversees custodians at City Hall and the Public Safety Complex, with stealing the radio. The police said it was one of a number of radios stored in an office at their headquarters that was used by the police Neighborhood Response Team and that the loss was discovered Aug. 22.

Evans turned himself in Tuesday and was arraigned in District Court that day on two felony charges: larceny over $500 and wrongful conversion by a municipal employee. The latter count arises from the embezzlement statute.

Judge Michael A. Higgins released Evans on $10,000 personal recognizance pending further court action, according to the police.

Evans, 48, of Applegate Road, has been suspended without pay from his $45,720-a-year job.

His lawyer, David A. Cooper, said yesterday that Evans denies the charges.

Cooper said the police case is based on the word of the auto body shop employee, whom he identified as Edwin L. Loignon, 72, and described as a convicted felon who hunts up business for the auto body shop and lawyers interested in personal-injury cases. Loignon frequently visits police headquarters to pick up copies of motor vehicle accident reports, according to Cooper.

“The police caught the guy who was behind this whole business and they gave him a free get-out-of-jail card,” Cooper complained. “Why would the police believe a convicted felon over a trusted employee who has been working there for a long period of time…”

He said the radio was kept in an office that is often left unlocked and to which more than six individuals have keys.

Operators of tow trucks and auto body shops traditionally have monitored police radio communications to stay on top of motor vehicle accidents for the sake of their businesses, said Maj. Thomas F. Oates III. But they have been frustrated since the advent of the digital communications system, in which much of the communication has been encrypted.

Someone with a new police portable, however, would be able to cut through the encryption and continue to monitor the radio communications.

Oates confirmed that Loignon “is a part” of the case against Evans and is associated with an auto body shop. But he declined to give specifics about how the police investigation led to Evans.

After a thorough investigation and consultation with the attorney general’s office, it was decided that only Evans would be charged, he said.

Court records show that Loignon pleaded no contest in 1993 to obtaining money under false pretenses –– a felony because the sum exceeded $500 –– and that he was given a suspended sentence of five years, with probation, and required to make restitution.

Loignon could not be reached for comment last night.

Evans is at least the fourth city employee to have been charged with a crime this year; three of those cases allege job-related wrongdoing.

gsmith@projo.com