PROVIDENCE — Former North Providence patrolman Paul Vittorio pleaded guilty to charges of witness tampering, concealing a felony and lying to federal agents in his arraignment yesterday before chief U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi.

The 37-year-old Vittorio, who has been free on bail since he assured U.S. Magistrate Lincoln D. Almond on Aug. 28 that he planned to plead guilty as part of a plea agreement, told Lisi that he fully understood she could ignore prosecutors’ recommendations for a lower sentence and instead impose the maximum penalty of 28 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.

Lisi said she would weigh evidence presented to her in a pre-sentencing report and sentence Vittorio on Feb. 6.

Vittorio is the second member of the Police Department to run afoul of the law this year, following Sgt. Michael Ciresi’s conviction in February on two counts of breaking and entering and seven other felonies. Yesterday, he admitted to allegations that over a three-year period he helped shield an 81-year-old drug dealer, Louis Romanelli, who occasionally provided him with pain-relieving drugs without a prescription, by not reporting Romanelli’s drug involvement and warning him that he might be under investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adi Goldstein said that if the case had gone to trial the government would have been prepared to present evidence showing Vittorio attempted to warn Romanelli in August 2006 that he was under investigation by the North Providence police and that he should close down his operations on Mineral Spring Avenue.

Romanelli, according to prosecutors, did relocate to a social club in Johnston, where in November 2007 he was arrested along with four other men on charges of manufacture, delivery and possession with intent to distribute several different types of prescription drugs. Romanelli was again arrested in May in a raid at the Prime Drug pharmacy, at 613 Cranston St., on charges of buying and selling oxycodone and hydrocodone to undercover agents of the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The count of witness tampering, according to Goldstein, stems from Vittorio’s meeting with a female witness who had been called to testify about Romanelli before a grand jury, in which he urged her, “Whatever, you say, if my name ever comes up, just don’t tell about the drugs. … Don’t say anything about drugs.”

After the witness testified, Vittorio met with her to seek assurances that she said nothing about his illegally receiving prescription drugs. Unbeknownst to him, the witness had indeed implicated the officer in her testimony and when she met with Vittorio she was wired, so the conversation was being taped by federal agents.

The third count, of lying to federal agents, stems from Vittorio’s insistence, when agents interviewed him in June, that he had not known that Romanelli was illegally selling prescription drugs and that he never obtained drugs from him.

Yesterday, after the session in Lisi’s court ended, attorney William C. Dimitri, one of two lawyers representing Vittorio, said his client wanted the public to know that he was never involved in selling or dealing drugs but did make the mistake of receiving prescription pain relievers from Romanelli on a few occasions, for which he is “now paying the price.”

State police Lt. David Palmer, who has been serving as interim chief of the North Providence Police Department since February, said top officials of the department had been “kept in the loop” through the investigation and noted that Timothy Heston, a North Providence detective, is a member of the Food and Drug Administration task force.

The incident, he said, “should not reflect poorly on the good men and women of the North Providence Police Department who put the uniform on every day. They are professional people, and I don’t want it to reflect poorly on them.”

rdujardi@projo.com