Railroading is essentially coercing/bullying someone into a situation or doing something with a connotation of things being taken too far, very quickly, using overwhelming force… like a train.
The case they’re referring to is the Karen Read case. The whole for/against thing has become quite political and sensationalized, especially after the involvement of a popular local online right-wing commentator named Turtle Boy (because Turtle Middle-Aged-Man didn’t have the same ring to it.) Another Canton policeman seemingly murdered a young woman who’d refused to get an abortion. He’d been sleeping with her for a few years after she started some sort of internship/cadet program with the police department as a high school student. Canton is a sleepy, medium-sized suburb, btw.
The corruption in the Massachusetts State Police is cartoonishly prevalent. There are too many major recent (and past) scandals to even choose one. They see themselves as a pseudo-military organization and are famous for their arrogant, officious, and rude manners, violence, aggression, corruption, and cover-ups. I got stopped at some sort of checkpoint in rural Georgia at 2am on a 2 lane country highway 50 miles from anything and was astonished by how professionally those bored cops acted. Completely different than my experiences with state police back home. Who knows: maybe the Georgia cops would have been way worse if I wasn’t white while there MSP might be more egalitarian in their ghoulishness?
I’ve had far more interaction with urban police in MA, both as a punk-ass teenager and in professional dealings, and the experience has been fine for the most part. Staties and cops in the suburbs? Yeesh.
