PC Mike Baillon has been awarded £400,000 in compensation after he quit his job due to becoming a “laughing stock” over a YouTube video in which he smashes the window of a pensioner’s car.
Baillon became an internet sensation after being filmed on an in-car police camera smashing to the window of a 74-year-old’s Range Rover with a truncheon while his partner climbed on the bonnet of the car after he was stopped for speeding. An internal investigation cleared the pair of misconduct, but Baillon was later removed from front line duties.
A tribunal, where Baillon was seeking damages for constructive dismissal, heard that the former policeman was ridiculed and bullied by his colleagues over the video, saying:
The ridicule from colleagues was getting to me – it was every single day.
They thought I had done wrong and I was lucky to have got away with it. I just wanted my closure.
The tribunal awarded him damages of £429,434.64 for loss of pension had he stayed in the force until the end of his career, as well as a further sum of around £10,000 for loss of earnings since leaving the force.
