UK residents who report their neighbors and local businesses to the police for violating the country’s increasingly stringent Covid-19 control measures are just doing their “civic duty” and should be praised, not ostracized, Merseyside chief constable Andy Cooke told the Daily Mail on Wednesday.

“People are doing a civic duty in contacting us for the right reasons,” he stated, insisting “the vast majority of people across the country are really concerned about this” and “any information that you can give us in relation to breaches will save lives, and that’s why people are [reporting to the police].”

Lamenting that the practice of turning one’s neighbor in to the authorities for minor infractions wasn’t more widely accepted among respectable Brits, Cooke blamed a “sneering culture” for placing rats at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

His remarks weren’t received well on social media, where users were quick to pull out the Nazi pics and Orwell quotes.