This issue consisted of excessive use of force by police departments which resulted in the death of many citizens and one of those citizens, was Radio Raheem. Even though Radio was just a character, the person he played, Michael Stewart, was not. Spike Lee describes how discreet Radio's death was compared to that of Michael Stewards by stating that, "...we didn't have his [Radio Raheem's] eyeballs popping out of his head like Michael Stewards did - [the police and the medical examiner] greased his eyeballs and tried to put them back in the sockets” (p. 189) This description of Steward's gruesome death serves to understand why Mookie proceeds to initiate the destruction of Sal's pizzeria after the police have. killed Radio while holding him in a chokehold. “Note that just three years after the release of this film, the nation witnessed another urban disaster when the Los Angeles ghetto was once again set ablaze by the violence following the announcement of the Rodney King case.” (pg. 186) Of note, even in the early 1990s, racial tensions still existed between the police department and its citizens, demonstrating that there was still mistrust in the justice system, a mistrust that is also portrayed in the film. Both Radio's death and Mookie's actions were symbolic because they tied together a series of conflicts and ideas. These ideas consisted not only of the boiling point of racial tensions within our country and police brutality, but also of the decisions the African-American community had to make about doing the right thing.