PROVIDENCE — John F. Cicilline, noted criminal defense lawyer and father of Mayor David N. Cicilline, peered into the window of the office next to the condominium where he lives with his wife in a dignified row house on Federal Hill.

Some men had been hanging around outside, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, and then leaving their litter behind. And he wanted to see what was going on inside.

Michael B. Stevens, a behavioral therapist who was conducting a group counseling session in the office, at 424 Broadway, noticed that a man was staring at him through the window. Stevens came outside to see what he wanted.

What Stevens said in their encounter last winter did not satisfy Cicilline’s curiosity. So the mayor’s father enlisted the help of a policeman — “He is a buddy of mine,” Cicilline acknowledged — to check into the goings-on next door. What he learned from the officer alarmed him: “Drug addicts and pedophiles” were being counseled.

Both his position on the office use and his use of the policeman seemingly have put Cicilline at odds with his son’s City Hall. What Cicilline and his alarmed neighbors see as a zoning violation in a “residential/professional zone,” city officials see as a legal use.

And the elder Cicilline said that he had his wrist slapped by Deborah Brayton, the mayor’s chief of staff, for having a police officer check out the therapist’s practice.

“I got a call from the mayor’s office,” the elder Cicilline related. “[She said] don’t be sending police officers up there to investigate. You have no right to do that.”

Cicilline griped at a Zoning Board of Review hearing at City Hall Monday night, “I can’t call a policeman. I’m like a third-class citizen.”

He said Thursday that the police officer is assigned to the Federal Hill area, but he has declined to identify the officer by name or rank. He said that he does not know if the officer went to speak to Stevens while on duty and in uniform.

“I don’t want Esserman on his case,” Cicilline said in reference to Police Chief Dean M. Esserman.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” he said, because city officials had been unresponsive to his complaints about the therapist’s practice. He said he has not taken up the issue with his son.

The mayor could not be reached for comment.

And the zoning board — appointed by his son — has given no solace to Cicilline and his neighbors, who say they are afraid for their families and other nearby residents and that the office use has injured their property values.

The board has voted to deny a petition from Cicilline asking that the practice of therapy be declared a zoning code violation and an illegal use of the office.

Stevens, who testified at the zoning hearing, said that he maintains three offices and that he does not have any clients at his Providence office who are dangerous. He acknowledged that he treats pedophiles and addicted people but he would not divulge what his clients are treated for at his Providence office.

Cicilline, who rents his condominium, said that he has filed a notice with the zoning board of his intention to appeal the decision to Superior Court. But he said that he might just move out of the neighborhood instead.

gsmith@projo.com