They claim he made a threat. The article failed to print his side of the story for some curious reason. It isn’t printing any testimony from the bystanders, either.
Fair enough, supposedly they were wearing body cams so hopefully some of what actually happened can be answered objectively, I’m just pointing out what the article said. If he didn’t make a threat or have a knife, then tasering him is a wild escalation, it’s just that if he did, then the police can’t really just let him get on a train.
Cops will often lie about the danger of a suspect in order to justify elevating their use-of-force. That said, they weren’t that concerned by his unreasonableness when they deployed tasers into the crowd first. They didn’t switch to guns until they realized the tasers weren’t going to work.
Again, assuming what the article says is true, which is a big assumption, it’s not that crazy to taser a guy who just got onto a train with a knife and threatened to you. At that point you’re looking at a potential mass stabbing incident if you do nothing.
Again, who knows, maybe the cops are blowing his behaviour wildly out of proportion, I’m just saying that, based on the article, it sounds like he wasn’t just gunned down for jumping a turnstile.