Members of The Providence External Review Authority — from left, Gladys Gould, Kaveh Hajian, Brother Everett Muhammad, Rochelle Lee and Angel Madera — stand in front of their office at 550 Broad St. in Providence. .

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The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

PROVIDENCE –– The Providence External Review Authority is a city agency whose mission is to investigate civilian complaints of police misconduct. It was formed in late 2002 after the departure of a now-disgraced police chief, at a time when complaints of brutality, racism and favoritism within the department were rife.

But since its formation, PERA has held just two hearings on complaints it has received from the public, and it’s now asking for a 78-percent increase in city funding, despite directives from Mayor David N. Cicilline that all city departments and agencies submit budgets with cuts in spending for the next fiscal year. And in direct defiance of an order issued by Cicilline’s director of administration, Richard Kerbel, PERA is refusing to move from its current location, 550 Broad St., to less expensive quarters in a city-leased building downtown.

Since the agency won’t follow orders to relocate, the city has decided to stop paying the $1,500-a-month rent on the spacious Victorian house that serves as PERA’s office and to reject any bills it submits for expenses. For now, says Kerbel, the salaries of PERA’s three staffers –– a confidential secretary and two retired FBI agents who serve as the agency’s executive director and case investigator –– are being paid. But Kerbel warns that if PERA does not relocate, “we may take the position that they’ve abandoned their jobs.” In that case, the city could fire the agency’s employees.

If that happens, Mayor Cicilline will have a fight on his hands. Last year, when he tried to eliminate funding for the review board and merge its function into the Human Relations Commission, the City Council restored all of its funding. Councilwoman Balbina Young is going to ask the council to appropriate federal stimulus money to purchase a separate building for PERA.

ON THE FACE of it, the standoff between the Cicilline administration and PERA seems merely a matter of cost-cutting, since the city faces a budget deficit of as much as $40 million for the next fiscal year. In his former life as a trial lawyer who filed civil-rights suits against Providence police officers, Cicilline was one of PERA’s biggest boosters. He lobbied hard for the agency’s creation and worked on the drafting of the city ordinance that created it. “I still think civilian review of a police department is a very good practice and it’s good to have” an agency outside the police department where the public can go to complain, he said last week.

But there may be a subterranean context to this tug of war between the city administration and its civilian police-review board, a political fight that features two nemeses.

PERA’s chairman is Artin H. Coloian, the former chief of staff to former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., whom Cicilline was highly critical of –– and decided to run against –– even before Cianci’s federal corruption conviction. Coloian, a lawyer, now represents the former city tax collector, Robert P. Ceprano, in a $10-million whistleblower claim against the city. On Jan. 29, Cicilline fired Ceprano, who was plunged into controversy last fall after The Journal reported on a bad check for $75,000 that the mayor’s brother, John M. Cicilline, had given the city on behalf of a delinquent taxpayer in 2006. At the time of the firing, the mayor said the collector’s office needed new leadership after an outside audit found errors in judgment in the acceptance and handling of the bad check.

Cicilline denies that the actions he is taking against PERA are politically motivated, though he agrees that some might perceive things that way.

“I’ve asked all of the top members of my administration to look at opportunities we have to consolidate functions within city government … not only to provide savings but also to enhance the quality of services that we provide … ” he said. Under Police Chief Dean M. Esserman, he said, “we have a Police Department which has very effectively managed to monitor and discipline itself. The chief has doubled the size of the Internal Affairs Department,” and “there has been a precipitous drop in the number of lawsuits” against the department in recent years, the mayor noted.

But Coloian –– who was put on the PERA board in 2006 by Councilman John J. Lombardi –– says what Cicilline is doing to PERA is all about politics: “Clearly his actions in this case demonstrate that he doesn’t want any scrutiny in the Police Department, and I think the public should be very concerned about this.” Coloian said he has tried repeatedly to get the mayor to sit down with him to try to iron out the impasse over PERA’s office space, to no avail. “He refuses to meet with me,” Coloian complains.

“THE MAYOR does not get involved in facilities management or issues involving space,” said his spokeswoman, Karen Southern. “For the mayor to meet with Artie Coloian would not be a good use of his time.”

Coloian says that he has no objection to moving PERA to save the city money, but that the office Cicilline wants PERA to move to –– adjacent to the Department of Planning & Development on the fourth floor of 400 Westminster St. –– isn’t private or spacious enough and “in my opinion, is a fire trap.” The new office is a mishmash of space that was renovated at a cost of $12,000 to city taxpayers but without the required building permit, which held up the issuance of a certificate of occupancy until last Friday. The administration disputes the safety issue. “The space is safe to occupy. Nothing was found wrong” in the inspection process, Kerbel said, adding that it was the landlord –– not the city — who failed to get the required building permit.

In recent weeks, as PERA has made it known that it will not move, the Cicilline administration has ramped up its criticism. In letters sent last month to Coloian and PERA’s executive director, it criticized the agency for not opening early enough in the morning and sometimes not being open in the middle of the day. Kerbel also complained that PERA staffers have been saving up sick time and vacation time.

The door to PERA’s office is locked even when the agency is ostensibly open, and you have to ring the doorbell to gain access.

Kerbel says that a city analysis of PERA’s work from 2005 through 2007 (the 2008 annual report has not been filed yet) shows that a total of 81 complaints were filed with PERA during that time span and that it has cost the city $896,994 to produce one hearing that resulted in disciplinary action and more than $8,000 to investigate each case.

PERA is a civilian review board –– unique in Rhode Island –– that has merely an advisory role in disciplining officers. Although police officers accused of misconduct across Rhode Island generally are judged by their peers in departmental hearings, the city carved out a role for PERA, which can investigate, compel cooperation by the accused, and make recommendations to the police chief regarding the discipline of officers in specific cases.

Coloian says his staffers work a lot of nights and weekends, and so they aren’t always in the office. And he disputes the administration’s assertion that PERA is getting fewer complaints. He says that last year alone, 70 cases –– more than ever –– were filed with PERA, and that 10 cases are being scheduled for hearing and one recently concluded, the agency’s second since its formation.

He says he has a $377,000 budget for next year –– a 78-percent increase that includes $16,000 in travel, $26,000 to buy two cars, salary increases and the addition of another staffer –– because Esserman proposes hiring 30 more police officers and the complaints keep pouring in. “Training is essential for our board members,” Coloian says. “These are conferences we are asking to go to, not glamorous places.” The cars, he says, are essential to protect PERA investigators’ safety.

He says the city shouldn’t complain: Since 2004, Coloian says, PERA has returned more than $275,000 it has been given “in unspent funds.”

It’s impossible to figure out if there is any overlap between the two units that investigate civilian complaints against police officers in the city –– the Providence Police Department’s Internal Affairs Unit and PERA — because much of the complaint process is shrouded in confidentiality. But according to the city solicitor’s office, there were 115 lawsuits filed against Providence police officers over alleged misconduct between 1993 and 2002 –– the year PERA was created –– and just 35 between 2003 and 2009.

City Council members say this may be due in part to PERA, which has finally found legitimacy after fending off legal challenges from the Fraternal Order of Police. Three council members interviewed in recent days –– Luis A. Aponte, Miguel Luna and Terrence M. Hassett –– all suggested that the existence of PERA as another venue for complaints has made the police better behaved and the police bureaucracy more responsive to complaints.

They said the need for an independent civilian review of the police has not changed, even if the public perceives that Esserman’s department is trustworthy. “Our challenge is to institutionalize these things, not personalize them,” Aponte said.

If Cicilline again attempts to merge PERA with the Human Relations Commission –– which Luna contends has a do-nothing record –– the council will resist, he said. Hassett pointed out that such a merger would require a voter-approved amendment to the city charter.

“We should let them do their job,” Luna and Young said of PERA. One cannot erase in a few years the wrongs that the police have done in disenfranchised neighborhoods for decades, Luna said.

gsmith@projo.com