The spin battle in the G-20 aftermath is intense.

Pittsburgh, a scrappy place that bounced back from economic downturn to become a green, friendly, modern city, the perfect host for a G-20 summit blazing a unified trail to world economic recovery.

Or ...

Pittsburgh, a locked-down ghost of a city occupied by swarms of storm troopers playing cat-and-mouse with a small band of anarchists and finally cracking down Friday on a group filled with University of Pittsburgh students.

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Local officials portray the summit as a huge success that put the city in a positive light on a world stage.

County Executive Dan Onorato said it showed the world "we can pull off an event like this." Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said, "We're pleased we delivered a peaceful summit."

Police said getting through two intense days of juggling peaceful marches, confrontations with unpermitted groups, and the possibility of terror attacks during a gathering of world leaders with only 83 arrests, no serious injuries and no security breaches is an impressive accomplishment. An additional 110 arrests late Friday took place after the summit officially closed.

On Wednesday, police arrested nine Greenpeace representatives who unfurled one banner on the West End Bridge and tried to hang a second on the Fort Pitt Bridge. They arrested dozens Thursday afternoon and evening during an unpermitted march that started in Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville before splitting apart, with participants clashing with police while they ranged over Bloomfield, East Liberty and Oakland.

On Friday, officers stood wall to wall along the route of a permitted march from Oakland, into Downtown and over the Andy Warhol Bridge into the North Side, a march that remained peaceful.

Hours later, they moved in on a loud crowd when they said it began to block Forbes Avenue. After issuing eight orders to disperse over 15 minutes, officers said they arrested those who had refused to comply.

Small groups of protesters assembled again last night -- about 35 people in front of the Allegheny County Jail and, later, about 60 students and others in Schenley Plaza -- to demonstrate support for those who had been arrested in the plaza the night before.

At the jail, protesters carried signs or candles, sang and chanted, "Stop arresting innocent people." No arrests were made there.

Two hours later, a handful of officers looked on from opposing corners while students and others gathered to chat and play hacky sack in Schenley Plaza. Shortly before 11 p.m., at least 60 people began to chant antipolice slogans and march through nearby streets while officers in riot gear monitored their movements. That gathering petered out, apparently without incident, about an hour later.

Others saw the days of the Group of 20 summit in a different light -- viewing it as an event that inconvenienced residents and tarnished the city's image due to both the disorder in its neighborhoods and the response of its police.

Many residents and businesses were frustrated initially by the lack of information about security and traffic, then about the extent of those measures.

People who live and work Downtown -- and didn't flee after learning of restrictions and closures -- on Thursday found an empty city blocked in dozens of spots by fences topped with concertina wire and heavily armed officers drawn from local, state and national police and security agencies.

Choreographed events for G-20 leaders and spouses -- a reception at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, a visit to the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts and to the Andy Warhol Museum -- were vivid on the world screen but carried out on an empty local stage.

The bulk of the controversy, though, stemmed from events Friday night in Oakland after the summit ended. At around 10:30 p.m., police massed near the grassy area of Schenley Plaza, where a loud crowd of about 400 people had gathered.

Police said the crowd spilled onto Forbes Avenue, blocking traffic. They began to give orders to disperse, starting at 10:42 p.m with the first of eight commands issued over 15 minutes. As they'd done on previous days, police employed a loudspeaker and the high-pitched whistle of a Long-Range Acoustic Device.

Many people in the crowd began to move. But a number of people who were there said they became hemmed in by a second group of police officers coming west on Forbes. A group of about 100 people knocked over a waist-high fence and scurried over a hedge before scattering onto the lawn between the Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Chapel.

Meanwhile, a police official said, a woman who had been riding a bicycle with another group that had moved up Bellefield Avenue to Fifth Avenue rode toward Pittsburgh Police Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson, pulled off at the last second, then turned to do it again.

Chief Donaldson, the scene commander, gave the order to begin making arrests. Many of the people on the Cathedral lawn were ordered to lie down and were arrested around 11 p.m. Among them was Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Sadie Gurman and at least two local news photographers.

Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, yesterday said people who were on the Pitt campus Friday night have told him they believe police had no reason to respond in that way. He said some who were arrested have said that they tried to disperse, but kept running into other police units and were trapped until they were arrested.

At a news conference yesterday, police Chief Nate Harper said people had plenty of time to leave before police moved on the crowd.

"If in 15 minutes, you don't know how to get out of there, how did you get there? Fifteen minutes is quite a period of time for you to begin to make egress," he said.

Mr. Walczak said the situation "could have been managed by far fewer police officers. The key is, it should have been managed and not suppressed."

A police official said that it wasn't that simple. Officers had obtained information that anarchists who participated in marches Thursday were planning to confront them. After discovering anarchists had been hiding in Panther Hollow, police were concerned that they would try to draw officers into confrontations with the crowd and damage property.

Police also believed that if they did not make arrests, they would end up with serious injuries and massive damage, the official said.

"We were disappointed but not surprised that we had issues there," said Public Safety Director Michael Huss. "We had intelligence earlier in the day that some of these folks had bought lighters and lighter fluid from the drug store."

Chief Harper said there will be a standard review of the operation and tactics that were used.

Pitt, too, had its own mixed opinion of events surrounding the G-20. The university opted to remain open during the summit, unlike many schools in the area, and invited those attending the event to visit its campus.

"This was a very good week for the University of Pittsburgh leading into Thursday afternoon. We had two world leaders here. The leaders engaged with our students," spokesman Robert Hill said. "We were just very disappointed that all changed Thursday night and was repeated again Friday night, with property damage on Thursday and arrests and more arrests on Friday night. Most of our students were engaged in their normal activities on Thursday and Friday and even Friday evening ... It's just really disappointing in the midst of our terrific campus life we had this ugly, untoward behavior."

Mr. Hill said Chancellor Mark Nordenberg was not available for comment yesterday.

There could be no disagreement over one thing: Pittsburgh was redded up for the G-20. And its effort to show itself as a clean city carried through even after the leaders' departure.

Less than half a day after G-20 leaders issued their final communique Friday, there was little sign on the streets that the summit -- and months of feverish work leading up to it -- ever happened.

By yesterday, streets in Bloomfield and Oakland where police and protesters had clashed were clean and quiet. At the latter, "Little Italy Days" went on as usual, as did bustling business in the Strip District and Shadyside where storefronts had been boarded up only a day earlier.

City laborers completed much of their cleanup after working through the night to remove concrete barriers around Downtown and pick up after Friday's march from Oakland to the North Side.

The biggest remaining task, which workers will tackle tomorrow, is returning trash cans that were removed from Oakland, Downtown and elsewhere so protesters could not use them as projectiles, said Public Works Director Guy Costa. Newspaper boxes were removed for the same reason.

At the same time, workers were mobilizing for today's Richard S. Caliguiri Pittsburgh Great Race from Squirrel Hill to Downtown. More than 12,000 runners have registered -- the second-highest number in the race's 32 years.

"We're going to blitz it," Mr. Costa said. He said outside of working during snow emergencies, "I've never seen anything like it."

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