A pair of council enforcement officers who caused outrage when they were caught on camera making disturbing threats to beat up a member of the public had been 'acting like gangsters for weeks', the Daily Mail can reveal.

The two 'thugs in uniform' can today be named for the first time as Joseph Fernandes, 38, and Umar Siddiq, 25, both of whom have now been sacked by Harrow council over their aggressive conduct.

The pair had attempted to issue a £100 fine to a terrified teenager they accused of spitting then angrily turned on a member of the public who stepped in to support her, saying: 'I'm going to knock you the f**k out and rip your teeth out'.

Today the Mail can reveal the pair had been using intimidatory tactics to coerce members of the public into paying fines for supposed civil offences in the days leading up to making the threat that got them fired.

Among a series of incidents they are said to have snapped off one motorist's car key in the ignition to prevent him from driving away while they pressured him - and left a vulnerable elderly woman resident in tears by falsely accusing her of dropping litter before threatening to call the police if she didn't pay £100.

The pair are also alleged to have had an animus against Hindus and Sikhs and to have mercilessly targeted members of both communities around the north west London borough.

We have further learned that the local resident they physically threatened in the now notorious video had incurred their fury when he intervened to protect a young woman he saw them trying to bully over a trumped up charge of spitting on the pavement.

The confrontation - which was captured in footage from a hidden camera which later went viral - saw both enforcement officers verbally lash out at a 23-year-old heating and air conditioning engineer, who only wanted to give his first name, Alvin.

But the furious bust-up on May 18 on a stretch of the Northolt Road, close to South Harrow tube station, was just the latest in a string of incidents in which Fernandes and Siddiq stand accused of adopting bully boy tactics.

Speaking exclusively to the Mail, Alvin said he had turned out of the underground station onto the Northolt Road after finishing work when he saw the pair - who were both wearing hoodies under hi-viz jackets - targeting a woman, who looked to still be in her teens.

Seeing her distress, Alvin went to support her, advising her that she did not have to pay a fine for spitting if there was no evidence that it had happened and advising her to keep on walking.

That intervention prompted the angry reaction from the enforcement officers Fernandes and Siddiq then aggressively turned on him.

In the footage - filmed on a secret camera embedded in his Meta sunglasses - both men, who worked for Kingdom Services Group and had been contracted by Harrow Council, squared up to him.

Explaining the chain of events, Alvin - whose face we have agreed to partially conceal over concerns for his safety - said: 'I'd finished work and was heading home from South Harrow station.

'I started walking towards Wenzel's bakery and I saw the enforcement officer with the long beard tap a young girl on her shoulder and then whisper something in her ear. That was red flag number one.

'He must have asked her to step to the side and follow him because she moved away from a busy bus stop and went to move towards a back street. That was also strange and so that's when I stepped in.

'I intervened and said to the officer "Excuse me, who do you work for ? The council or a private company?".

'He didn't say anything, just stared. I repeated myself and again he said nothing and looked right through me. The girl was in her teens and she looked scared so I told her: "You don't need to say anything or pay anything….just walk on and get on the bus".

'She did just that and the officer didn't like it all. We exchanged a few words. He was raging at me, saying 'Why are you butting in? Why are you messing with my money?'

'He started swearing at me asking me "why are you f***ing with my business?"

'We started to part ways and I said "you're such a p***y for doing what you do. You shouldn't be doing things like that".

'That's when he became more aggressive and came towards me with his colleague. I had my Meta sunglasses on and at that point started recording.

'The older guy with the red hood was the most aggressive. He was trying to get me to go over to an alleyway so he could fight me.

'I probably shouldn't have stooped to their level but it was difficult to stay calm with such provocation.'

In the footage, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, Fernandes, wearing a red hood, was the more aggressive of the pair.

He told Alvin: 'Come to the alleyway right now, we're going to show you what time it is. We're going to show you what time it is, bruv.

'We're going to make sure you can't work no more and earn no money because you're trying to butt in with our money – and bruv, do you know what I do to people like that? Come here now. Let's go.'

Standing in a bus lane, the officer appeared to try and turn off his body-worn camera before signalling for to cross the road, saying: 'I swear, when I'm not in uniform, I'm going to knock you the f*** out and rip your teeth out. Do you know that? If I give you one punch, I'll knock all your teeth out.'

Siddiq, wearing a black hoodie, told him: 'Don't butt in my business. We've got people to feed'.

He added: 'If I call a police officer for you, he'll f*** you up, you know, because we work with them and you didn't know that, did you? So come across the road now because I'm going to show you what time it is.'

Alvin said the altercation lasted around ten minutes before they crossed the road and moved away from him.

He said he went to a vape shop and when he came out, he saw the same two officers trying to fine a man in his fifties, who he believed was a homeless beggar who did not speak much English.

He added: 'The two officers had their backs to me so I motioned to the man with my fingers for him to walk off.

'I turned into a Savers store and the beggar followed me. When the two officers saw me they started again.

'The bearded guy was the more aggressive this time. He was swearing at me again so I just said 'you keep saying you're going to do something… just do it'. They were causing a scene. In the end the store security guard asked them to leave.'

Alvin said he later complained to Harrow Council over the behaviour of their enforcement officers but said the authority did not seem to act until he posted footage of his encounter onto TikTok last week.

Fernandes and Siddiq both come from Southgate, ten miles across North London from Harrow.

Fernandes is a fitness fanatic and personal trainer who was last listed living at an £900,000 semi-detached home with his aunt.

A male relative at the house would only say: 'There are two sides to every story but you've probably already made your mind up. He probably won't speak to you.'

Siddiq lives just half a mile away in a top floor flat with his family. When asked to give his account of what happened, he said: 'The video online was taken out of context. There's more to it than what people have seen.'

But he didn't explain further.

Both men were employed directly by Kingdom Group Services, a firm contracted by several large corporations and local authorities, including healthcare provider Bupa, the NHS, Harrow and Haringey Councils and Tesco.

They worked all over Harrow but took particular interest in the Northolt Road, where they were said to lurk in alleyways to spy on members of the public - and to have targeted members of the local Sri Lankan and the Indian communities with numerous fixed penalty notices.

On May 25, a van driver, who had come from Birmingham to deliver meat and poultry to a butcher, was fined twice in the same day because he had momentarily pulled over at the side of the road before reversing his vehicle into a tight driveway behind the shop.

In doing so the driver had briefly blocked a driveway as he waited for the driver of another van to move that vehicle out of the way so he could manage the tricky manoeuvre but despite having not left his cab at any point, he was issued with two on-the-spot £100 tickets.

Siddiq fined him for obstructing a dropped kerb while Fernandes fined him for 'idling'.

In another case, an Indian man who works in a local supermarket on the Northolt Road told how he blew off a piece of fluff from his top lip - and was fined £100 by Siddiq for spitting.

The man, who asked not to be named, said: 'He was 50-metres on the opposite side of the road with buses and heavy traffic in between me and him. How could he have seen properly?

'I didn't spit, I had something on my top lip and I blew it away. There was nothing on the floor in front of me.

'He asked me my name and I believe because I'm a Hindu and have an Indian name, he issued a fine.'

Local community representative Kumarasamy Indrachith said Fernandes and Siddiq had been working the stretch of Northolt Road since March this year.

When tensions came to a head two weeks ago, Mr Indrachith interviewed Siddiq on camera asking why he was apparently targeting local motorists, shoppers and business owners.

In the video, uploaded onto Mr Indrachith's social media, Siddiq flashed his Council ID card and said: I don't make the laws. I'm a citizen of the United Kingdom. I follow the laws and regulations. I'm a professional, I do my job to the best of my ability.

'I've been brought up in a household where it's working class. We weren't rich. I've been working from the age of 16.

'Talking about targeting, myself, I'm an Asian. I'm from Afghanistan. You guys are from Sri Lanka. This is a Sri Lankan community mainly so the offences will be caused by the Sri Lankans.'

Mr Indrachith, a prospective Conservative councillor who narrowly lost out in May's local elections, said: 'I have seen the way he and his colleague interacted with people and it was aggressive and bullying at times.

'They were acting like gangsters with hoods pulled over their heads. That's not how a council official should look or behave.

'I had countless complaints. One man said that his car key was snapped in the ignition as one of them tried to grab them and stop him from driving off. They falsely accused an elderly Sri Lankan woman of spitting and dropping litter and reduced her to tears by threatening to get the police involved.

'There were other incidents of drivers stopping momentarily in side streets to drop off children or other relatives to buy groceries quickly and despite not leaving their vehicles they were issued with a fixed penalty notice.

'They were constantly shouting at delivery drivers to move after they'd outstayed their supposed 15-minutes loading time. They could be loud and aggressive and it annoyed local supermarket owners.

'They didn't give anyone any sort of leeway or time to move the car, they just ticketed people straight away.

'I believe they knew some residents didn't have a great grasp of English and I think they used to exploit that.

'There are also at least three supermarkets on this part of the road that import food products directly from Sri Lanka and so we get members of the Sri Lankan community from outside London, places like Leicester and Birmingham, coming here at weekends who don't know the parking restrictions.

'That was another ploy.'

A spokesperson for Harrow Council said: 'Swift action was taken as soon as the incident and complaint were raised to us and Kingdom in May, and the individuals involved no longer work for Kingdom.

'We take any instance of officers deliberately turning off body-worn cameras extremely seriously. Threats of violence towards members of the public are wholly unacceptable and will not be tolerated.'

A spokesman for Kingdom Services Group added: 'We are aware of the video circulating in relation to the serious conduct of two Kingdom Local Authority Support enforcement officers.

'As soon as the incident and subsequent complaint were brought to our attention in May, swift action was taken.

'The individuals concerned no longer work for Kingdom Local Authority Support.'

They later added: 'They had both passed their DBS checks, completed their mandatory training and no previous complaints had been made about the two individuals.

'We understand the incident has been reported to the police and we will support any further investigation.'

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: ‘Police were contacted by the London Borough of Harrow on Monday, 15 June after a video surfaced online regarding the conduct of two contracted enforcement officers.

'We are currently assessing the information provided to us and are working to contact the person involved.’