TORONTO -- Thomas Kerr admits he's a chronic drunk, a petty criminal and a man who has provoked plenty of brawls during his wretched life on the city's streets.

This week, he starts the fight of his life in a court hearing his lawyer says will finally call the Toronto Police Service to account for an orchestrated vigilante beating by several officers including Police Association president Craig Bromell.

"I wanna crush them like a champ; I wanna kill the bastards," an intoxicated Mr. Kerr said last week in an interview at his lawyer's office.

To a gentle remark by lawyer Barry Swadron that he had perhaps had a little to drink, he retorted: "So what? I'm a chronic alcoholic. Does that give them the right to beat me up?"

Mr. Kerr alleges -- and the force's own internal-affairs investigation backed him up -- that a group of officers took Mr. Kerr from 51 Division headquarters to a deserted parking lot near Cherry Beach on Aug. 21, 1996, and pounded him with their boots and fists, leaving bruises and swelling all over his body.

The beating is alleged to have been payback for a fight a week earlier between Mr. Kerr and another officer that left the policeman with a broken arm.

No charges were laid against the officers, either under the Criminal Code or the Police Act, and the matter ended with the internal-affairs investigation after prosecutors decided the case was not winnable because Mr. Kerr would make such a poor witness, Mr. Swadron said.

Tomorrow, Mr. Kerr finally gets his day in court as he brings a $750,000 lawsuit against nine constables, then-police chief David Boothby and deputy chief William Blair, and the Toronto Police Services Board.

"It's going to be a watershed case," Mr. Swadron said last week. "If we prove Tom's allegations, it's going to be the blackest eye on the police force. This is not a renegade cop, it's a concerted conspiracy."

According to Mr. Kerr, the beating followed a spell in the drunk tank at 51 Division that day.

He had sobered up and was to be released, he says, when an officer hustled him out of the station's back door and into a cruiser, which took him to a lot on Cherry Street.

There, he says, other cruisers appeared and officers jumped out, dragged him on to the ground and brutally beat him.

An Ontario Superior Court judge sitting without a jury will be presented with results of the internal-affairs probe that found Mr. Kerr's fingerprint in the cruiser of one of the accused officers, his blood on another's boots, and his hair in the gunbelt of another.

The judge will also hear of police-radio transmissions that afternoon directing cruisers to go to "Trailers," allegedly a code word for a parking lot on Cherry Street where Goodwill Industries parked its trailers in 1996.

And he or she will be told how police lockers that were sealed immediately after the incident were broken into during the probe.

During the investigation, the officers refused to give statements to the province's Special Investigations Unit, but the option of staying silent does not exist in the civil-trial process.

Mr. Swadron said he has interviewed several of the officers in extensive examinations for discovery, though he still has not been able to locate four officers who have retired.

He plans also to introduce wiretap evidence from home phones of some of the officers.

"Every day is going to be explosive," Mr. Swadron said.

The beating of Mr. Kerr was worse than the beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles Police Department, which drew international outrage, because it did not happen during an explosive confrontation, Mr. Swadron said.

"This is not a case of excessive police force; they weren't entitled to use any force."

The officers should at least have been charged, Mr. Swadron said.

"The brass did their part. I'd like to see how it ended up as zero prospect of conviction."

In their statements of defence, lawyers for the police officers and the police services board deny the beating ever took place.

They say that if Mr. Kerr suffered any injuries in August, 1996, they occurred before or after his interaction with officers of 51 Division.