A police officer with Hertfordshire Constabulary has lost his job after he twice punched a suspect and used abusive language towards them.

At around 10.15pm on April 5 last year, PC Cory Kattenhorn was chasing a suspect who was part of a group fleeing on foot after a police pursuit near Hemel Hempstead involving the suspected stealing of catalytic converters.

A police misconduct panel heard that the suspect, described as an Irish traveller, was found sitting with his arms up and palms open.

Kattenhorn then used “unnecessarily aggressive” language and threatened him with a taser, before punching him twice in the head with “a clenched fist”, making him bleed.

At one point, he said: “I am going to f*** you up.” He also said: “Put your arm behind your back or I will f***ing break it.” Kattenhorn said he “was trying to ensure that [the suspect] complied with my instructions”.

After arresting the suspect, Kattenhorn said to another officer: “Shame the c***s didn’t go into the river. They’re like f***ing dogs, drown all of them.”

The panel concluded Kattenhorn’s words could have referred to “the suspects of theft in general”, rather than specifically to Irish people or travellers.

Kattenhorn also described the suspects as “f***ing dirty scumbags” and told officers: “I kicked the s*** out of him”.

PS Adrian Murphy told the panel he had not “seen a worse case of red mist”, and PC Altendorff, who runs training for officers, suggested Kattenhorn had “lost control of himself”.

Kattenhorn rejected most of the allegations against him, but admitted his language had been “unprofessional” and apologised “for the offence that has been caused”.

He said he was worried that the suspect was “extremely violent and dangerous”, and may have had a knife. He claimed he had punched the suspect’s upper back rather than his head.

But the panel found Kattenhorn had “deliberately falsely described” the incident and said the suspect was “not actively resisting arrest”.

Footage from Kattenhorn’s bodyworn camera was marked as “non-evidential” after the incident, meaning it could have been automatically deleted earlier than if it had not been marked in that way. 

Kattenhorn said he had shouted the word ‘taser’ as a threat, but the panel concluded he had wrongly drawn it while “directly behind a colleague” and where it would be “too far away to be effective”.

The panel said he had used more force than was “necessary, proportionate and reasonable”. It concluded his language was “abusive, oppressive, bullying and offensive”.

Kattenhorn, who has twice received awards from the Royal Humane Society for helping to save lives while on duty, handed in his resignation on September 13.

The panel concluded his actions constituted gross misconduct and dismissed him from Hertfordshire police.