Oh yeah, all that media sensationalism and the later police crackdown was totally "a blind eye". Whenever I talk to people who were in Seattle for that the first thing they always tell me is that the cops never "left", they basically kettled everyone while the media flipped the fuck out. The anarchists did not take over Seattle. If you think CHAZ was some sort of revolution you are actually retarded. Other then a few incidents of crazy people doing crazy people shit it was basically just a politically tinged bloc party (by the way, "crazy people shit" happens in every major city every single day, but nobody calls that a failure of police as an institution. Don't believe the hype.)
CHAZ was just another attempt at the kind of shit that happened in Tahrir, Taksim, Syntagma, the Indignados movement, Occupy, Hong Kong...
Whenever activists reach critical mass they set up camp in city streets, use this to get media attention, and then wait for the cops to kick the shit out of them. If you were surprised you haven't been paying attention for the past 10 years.