PROVIDENCE — It was “despicable,” an indignant mayor said. A hue and cry was raised. And criminal investigators were summoned.

As the years have passed, however, the public may have forgotten about the brief controversy that erupted at the Providence Public Safety Complex. After all, a state criminal probe petered out. A follow-up review by the U.S. Attorney’s office produced nothing.

It was all about an allegedly secret telephone monitoring system — ambitiously brand-named Total Recall — that missed nothing and kept all that it heard stored in its huge memory. The system was tucked away in a locked utility closet at the complex, only to be discovered by a mayoral task force examining the city Department of Communications.

The Total Recall system became the subject of a legal battle that only now, five years after the closet door was thrown open, is coming to trial.

About 150 people, mostly employees of the Public Safety Department but also some of their relatives and friends, are suing the city and current and former city officials, claiming that the use of Total Recall invaded their privacy.

“My idea was to try this case in the Dunk,” joked Senior Assistant City Solicitor Kevin F. McHugh, in reference to the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. “Everyone could fit in there at once.”

The battlefield actually is a courtroom at the Providence Federal Building and Courthouse, on Kennedy Plaza, to be overseen by U.S. District Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond. Opening arguments in the jury trial of the potentially multimillion-dollar lawsuit are scheduled for this morning.

The employees, including firefighters, police officers and clerks, claim that when officials had Total Recall plugged in and switched on, the officials violated their right to privacy under the federal and state constitutions, a state privacy statute, and federal and state wiretapping statutes.

City officials say the plaintiffs knew about the recording, but the plaintiffs insist they did not. The large majority of incoming and outgoing calls at the complex were recorded — 19 of the hundreds of telephone lines were exempted — but nobody was eavesdropping as conversations occurred.

Besides city government, the plaintiffs are squared off against Urbano Prignano Jr., former police chief; Manuel Vieira, former director of the Department of Communications; Mary Lennon, former chief of operations for the department; Mayor David N. Cicilline and Police Chief Dean M. Esserman.

The first three defendants are being sued personally as well as in their former official capacities, and Cicilline and Esserman are being sued only in their official capacities.

In effect, that means city taxpayers could be on the hook to help pay any financial award that the judge and jury might make.

Cicilline and Esserman expressed outrage when Total Recall was discovered, but, in a striking turnabout, they are now pooh-poohing it in court.

When the existence of the monitoring and recording system was divulged publicly in February 2003, Cicilline denounced it as “a despicable invasion of privacy.”

“I think we all should be furious about this,” he declared.

He and Esserman arranged for a state police investigation of the system, which had been installed during the administration of former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., of which Cicilline and Esserman had been harshly critical. After Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch concluded that no criminal law had been broken in the use of Total Recall, Esserman requested a review by the U.S. Attorney, which ultimately proved fruitless as well.

The state criminal investigation concluded that, except for troubleshooting or maintenance access, only three recorded conversations were retrieved during the approximately seven months that Total Recall was in use.

And now the City of Providence, Cicilline and Esserman, whose lead lawyer is McHugh, are saying in court that Total Recall was much ado about nothing. Even those three retrieved calls did not involve any of the plaintiffs.

McHugh argues that as an employer and as a law-enforcement agency, in the normal course of business, the Department of Public Safety may legally record the calls made on its telephone system; that the city was not required to notify its employees of the recording but that they were notified anyway; and that the employees in effect had consented to the recording.

In the report of the criminal investigation, state police Detective Cpl. Douglas C. New-berg concluded that the purchase, installation and use of Total Recall “was not performed in a surreptitious manner” and that there was a “general consensus” of personnel at the Public Safety Complex and in the Department of Communications that phone calls were being recorded.

Carolyn A. Mannis and Mark A. Fay, lawyers for the plaintiffs, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

It is not clear if Cicilline’s remarks about an invasion of privacy may come back to haunt him in court. The mayor sent word through spokeswoman Karen Southern that, given the existence of litigation, it would be inappropriate for him to talk about the subject now.

As for Esserman, he says he did not overstate the seriousness of the existence of Total Recall when he and the mayor announced it.

Asked Monday, in light of the city’s potential legal liability, if he handled the situation correctly, Esserman replied, “I have no second thoughts about having discovered that system, having ripped it out of the wall and having contacted both our mayor and our [labor] union … about its existence.”

gsmith@projo.com