A High Court judge has ruled in favour of a police corporal assigned to an elite unit of the police service, declaring his nearly three-year suspension – after an investigation into the deaths of two suspects in the murder of Andrea Bharatt – unlawful.

Justice Devindra Rampersad granted multiple declarations in Cpl Joel Barton’s favour, quashed the commissioner’s decision in 2022 to suspend him, and described the circumstances of the suspension as “arbitrary,” “reprehensible,” and “inexplicable.”

Barton, an officer with 21 years of service and a former member of the elite Special Operations Response Team (SORT), was suspended on January 11, 2022. The suspension followed an investigation by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) into the deaths of Andrew Morris and Joel Balcon, both suspects in the high-profile murder case of court clerk Andrea Bharatt.