WEST WARWICK — The trouble began when someone swiped a “Vote for Anybody But Alves” sign from Alan Palazzo’s lawn on Robin Lane.

About a week later, somebody egged his wife’s BMW, as well as another political sign on his property.

Three hours later, shortly before midnight on Aug. 11, according to the police report, Palazzo was working at his computer when he heard the bang of a door and looked outside to see someone steal a political sign from his yard and jump into a Toyota Camry.

Palazzo, a longtime political critic of eight-term Sen. Stephen D. Alves, gave chase in his car. The Camry got away, but not before Palazzo got the license plate.

The car turned out to be registered to Joan Brousseau, wife of recently retired Police Chief Peter T. Brousseau, according to the police report.

The West Warwick police investigated and, according to a spokesman for the state attorney general, identified two of the people in the Camry as the daughter of the ex-chief and Alves’ son, William.

An angry Alves countered last night that his son — an honors student and football captain at West Warwick High School — is being dragged into the gutter of town politics by the senator’s foes.

“I can assure you that my son was not in that car,” said Alves.

“He could pass every type of lie-detector test. He was at his girlfriend’s house, and then they got a bite to eat. I challenge anyone in the West Warwick Police Department to say he was in that car.”

Now, as summer turns to fall and disappearing signs mark the campaign season as surely as autumn leaves, the question is what, if anything, should be done about the pilfered political placards.

Mike Healey, a spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, said yesterday that the West Warwick police asked state prosecutors to review the case for possible criminal charges last Friday. But the attorney general’s office passed, he said.

“I can understand why they asked … they wanted us to look at it because they think, based on local politics, that it’s a hot potato,” said Healey. “They said that Alves’ son and the former chief’s daughter were in the car, and allegedly involved in the chicanery.”

At most, however, Healey said any potential crime would be a misdemeanor, such as vandalism, and more appropriately handled by the Town of West Warwick’s prosecuting attorney.

Healey said that that was the opinion of Deputy Attorney General Gerry Coyne as well as Feidlim Gill, the head of juvenile prosecution.

“We can’t be in the business of handling local cities’ and towns’ political squabbles, or we’d spend all our time doing that,” said Healey.

J. Patrick O’Neill, the town’s prosecuting attorney, said last night that a West Warwick police officer delivered him a package of information on the case yesterday “as thick as a murder file.” After reading it, however, he concluded that “there wasn’t enough there to prosecute anybody for anything.”

O’Neill said that it wasn’t clear from the file who identified Alves’ son.

Neither Brousseau, who could not be reached for comment last night, nor Alves would let the police question their children, according to O’Neill.

Alves said that his son “had nothing to say,” and that the senator refused to let the police question him when two detectives came by the house because he didn’t want the youth dragged into the political fray.

“All of a sudden my son is the number-one villain with the West Warwick Police Department,” fumed Alves. “They put two detectives on this over two signs that were returned within the hour? I have to question the judgment of the West Warwick police leadership to help perpetrate a political vendetta.”

Police Chief Paul A. Villa could not be reached for comment last night.

According to a police report, a patrolman questioned Brousseau, who said that he had spoken to his daughter and “she refused to tell him who else was in the vehicle with her.”

After Brousseau learned of the incident, according to the police report, the ex-chief told patrolman Anthony Rozzero that he, his wife and his daughter returned four political signs to Palazzo’s house and other nearby houses.

Palazzo told The Journal yesterday that someone left the signs in his yard, but he didn’t see who.

Another police report, on Aug. 12, noted that Palazzo is actively campaigning for Michael Pinga, Alves’s opponent in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.

“The campaign trail,” the report noted, “has been muddied on both [sides] by the theft of political signs and so forth.”

On Aug. 9 —two days before Palazzo’s nocturnal encounter — Alves said that he was in Massachusetts with his son William, touring prospective colleges, when relatives informed him that many of his blue-and-white campaign signs had vanished overnight from lawns around town.

The signs turned up in a large trash container behind a house under construction in Coventry.

The police, says Alves, have not investigated.

mstanton@projo.com