PROVIDENCE — A Superior Court judge has validated a controversial civilian board created to review misconduct by Providence police officers.

Judge Stephen Fortunato has ruled that the board, which is empowered by the mayor and City Council to investigate misconduct complaints and recommend disciplinary action by the police chief, does not conflict with a state statute known as the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights.

The issue came to the judge after the civilian review board, officially known as the Providence External Review Authority, sought for the first time to call in two patrolmen for an investigation.

The board wants to get to the bottom of a complaint by Darrell Wyche, 53, a mentally and physically disabled man who said the police roughed him up and that one officer declared himself “a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

The police labor union, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 3, went to court to block the investigation and to have the board declared null and void. Police officers may only be disciplined under the provisions of the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, which does not allow for a review board composed of civilians, the FOP contended.

In a decision not yet formally recorded in court, Fortunato said the FOP is wrong. The civilian review board may not impose any discipline itself, he said, but it may investigate, compel police officers to cooperate with the investigation, and make recommendations to the police chief.

He said, in effect, that the civilian review process is a preliminary supplement to the disciplinary process under the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. Ultimately, the judge said, an officer may be disciplined only by his police colleagues under the process laid out by the bill of rights law.

R. Kelly Sheridan, lawyer for the civilian review board, called Fortunato’s ruling “a truly significant decision” that affirms the city’s policy of having civilian review of alleged police misconduct.

Joseph Rodio, lawyer for the FOP, said the union is considering an appeal of the ruling to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. The FOP is amenable to a formal process to resolve specific conflicts between officers and civilians, he said, but does not recognize the legality of the civilian review board as it is constituted.

Speaking from the bench a week ago, Fortunato told the participants in the case how he would rule. He said Providence municipal officials wanted to involve residents in the oversight of police misconduct because over the years citizen complaints to the Police Department “often wound up in wastebaskets.” Anyone who has been around the Rhode Island courts for any length of time knows that, he said.

Fortunato added that he does not mean to criticize the current Providence police administration.

The judge said the majority of police officers perform their dangerous duties “in an admirable fashion” but that some are racist and mistreat the public and they should be “rooted out.”

Wyche’s complaint is a test case, selected to go to litigation between the city and the FOP so the disputed legality of the Providence External Review Authority, or PERA, could be settled.

“We had told PERA a long time ago that we were going to fight this, to pick a case and we would go with it,” Rodio said yesterday.

Wyche complained that Patrolmen Joseph Sarrasin and Keith LaFazia harassed him from time to time and made him fearful and that on one occasion in September 2005, Sarrasin roughed him up in the hallway of Dexter Manor, a public housing project downtown where Wyche lived.

Wyche, who is black, alleged that Sarrasin declared himself to Wyche as “a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Rodio said Sarrasin and LaFazia deny the allegations, that the allegations are factually flawed and that the credibility of their accuser is in serious doubt.

The civilian review board, signed into law in 2002, was conceived in controversy after a seven-year and ultimately successful political and legal campaign by DARE, a political-action group, to obtain from the Police Department records of complaints of alleged brutality by police officers.

Civilian-review advocates said that struggle and continuing community distrust of the police justified the creation of an official agency to monitor and act on police misconduct from outside the department.

The FOP contends that the General Assembly, exercising its statewide authority over police matters, created the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights as the exclusive mechanism for dealing with police officers who are under investigation and subject to discipline, demotion or dismissal for violation of the rules of their departments.

The Providence External Review Authority was set up as an alternative to that mechanism, the FOP asserts, and lacks the protections afforded to police officers by the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. It intrudes on the superior authority of the General Assembly, the union contends.

The FOP said that one of the protections inherent in the bill of rights law, and explicitly affirmed by the Supreme Court, is the presumption that police officers, understanding the departmental requirements of the job, are best-suited to judge the actions of other police officers. Charges against police officers are investigated by police officers, and the outcome is determined by police officers.

Under the bill of rights law, a police chief may initiate disciplinary proceedings against an officer and may impose a maximum suspension of two days without pay for a minor infraction. If the chief wants stiffer punishment, the case must be referred to a specially appointed committee of three officers — one is selected by the officer under investigation — that decides if the officer is guilty of the charges and what punishment, if any, is imposed.

The process is secret and allows for public disclosure only if the officer is found guilty, if the officer requests disclosure or if the matter becomes criminal.

In contrast, the Providence External Review Authority provides for a less-secret process — the identities of a complainant and accused officer are kept confidential — overseen by civilians, some of whom may be former law enforcement officers.

The results of that process are then turned over to the police chief with a recommended action if a violation is found. When the chief acts, he must make public what he did and why. If he seeks to impose discipline, it must conform to a list of punishments created by the civilian review board.

As to whether civilians may officially review the conduct of police officers, the judge cited an East Providence case decided by the Supreme Court.

The East Providence Minority Political Caucus went to the City Council about alleged racial remarks by a police officer and asked the council to investigate. The city affirmative action officer, a civilian, did a preliminary investigation, submitted a report to the city manager in which she recommended the police officer’s firing, and submitted a formal complaint to the Police Department. That complaint then went through the bill of rights process.

The Supreme Court ruled, “As a preliminary proceeding not resulting directly in disciplinary action, [the] investigation did not have to meet the requirements of the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights.”