A Toronto judge has ruled that “adrenalized” police officers acted as aggressors at a peaceful political rally that led to dozens of arrests during last year’s G20 summit.

“The only organized or collective physical aggression at that location that evening was perpetrated by police each time they advanced on demonstrators,” Justice Melvyn Green ruled on Thursday. He was referring to a demonstration at Queen St. and Spadina Ave. on Saturday, June 26, 2010.

Green stated police criminalized political demonstration, which is “vital” to maintain a “viable democracy.”

Justice Melvyn Green accepted Puddy's defence that he was not carrying the knife as a weapon and further ruled that since the arrest was illegal, so too was the search that uncovered the knife.

Puddy's arrest, he wrote, was "completely unjustified."

Green's judgment caused a stir because of its harsh criticism of police tactics. He said police officers acted as the aggressors that evening.

"The only organized or collective physical aggression at that location that evening was perpetrated by police each time they advanced on demonstrators," Green wrote.

He went on to say that the "zealous exercise of police arrest powers in the context of political demonstrations risks distorting the necessary if delicate balance between law enforcement concerns for public safety and order, on the one hand, and individual rights and freedoms, on the other."