A POLICE officer who was forced to resign after being caught on camera smashing a pensioner's car has reinvented himself as a manufacturer of wooden Christmas reindeer figures.

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 in 2009 was viewed more than 30 million times on YouTube.

He said he became the butt of daily jokes and his barrister Nick Smith told a tribunal he had became a "pariah".

The father-of-two was later removed from frontline duties and won a constructive dismissal claim at Cardiff Employment Tribunal earlier this year.

But he started a company with his wife called Celtic Woodcrafts, which makes hundreds of wooden reindeer figures sold to UK garden centres, a tribunal heard today.

Giving evidence against his former employer Gwent Police Mr Baillon said: "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."

Mr Baillon was speaking at a remedy hearing convened to determine how much compensation he should receive from Gwent Police.