A POLICE officer who was forced to resign after being caught on camera smashing a pensioner’s car could be in line for a six-figure payout.

Ex-traffic cop Mike Baillon, 42, quit Gwent Police after footage showing him hit the car window of 74-year-old Robert Whatley 15 times in Usk was viewed more than 30 million times on YouTube.

The dad-of-two, who has reinvented himself as a woodturner selling thousands of Christmas reindeer to UK garden centres, said he became the butt of daily jokes after the incident in 2009 and his barrister Nick Smith told a tribunal he had become a “pariah” in the force.

Yesterday, Gwent Police disputed the amount Mr Baillon, who was removed from frontline duties after the incident and won a constructive dismissal claim at a Cardiff employment tribunal earlier this year, should get for lost earnings and the pension he would have received if he had stayed in the force.

Jonathan Walters, a barrister for Gwent Police, told the tribunal Mr Baillon wanted to claim “hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money” from his former employer.

He also suggested the entrepreneur was seeking to “downplay” the prospects of his fledgling business in order not to prejudice the value of his claim.

Mr Baillon emphatically denied this was the case.

He shifted around 2,700 wooden reindeer, selling for as much as £50 each, in the last year through a company he founded with his wife called Celtic Woodcrafts, the tribunal was told.

Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Baillon said: “I really enjoy having something I can get my teeth into.

“I have taken a lot of pride out of doing that. It’s been therapeutic.”

The businessman added: “I’m not a quitter. I wanted to stay in that job even after two years of investigations.

“When it became apparent they were all so callous I decided to walk away.”

Tribunal Judge Roger Harper ruled on February 27 that Mr Baillon had suffered a detriment and been unfairly dismissed.

Judge Harper adjourned the case for a further hearing scheduled to take place on December 9.