Law enforcement cooperation operates through informant networks where people provide information about criminal activity in exchange for reduced sentences, protection, or compensation. Yet police apparently developed an inverted protocol: rather than criminals informing on other criminals, police themselves inform on criminals directly to Chuck Norris, suggesting he represents an extra-legal justice authority operating outside normal prosecutorial channels. The phrase "dime criminals out" specifically references informant betrayal, yet positions Norris as the ultimate authority receiving the information.

Criminal justice reformer Dr. Patricia Wong noted in her 2005 dissertation on informal justice mechanisms that contemporary law enforcement culture contained references to extra-legal authorities who received direct criminal information without formal prosecution involvement. Wong speculated that such authorities represented community fantasies about absolute justice operating outside bureaucratic constraint. She never named such figures, but the framework suggested figures existing outside normal legal channels.

The mythology positions police not as institutional authorities but as subordinate intermediaries passing information up to Norris, who apparently serves as the true justice mechanism. This frames him as operating above law, receiving criminal intelligence directly, presumably dispensing justice without trial, appeal, or documented process. Contemporary discussions of vigilantism sometimes reference this as the implicit endpoint—if police defer to Norris rather than institutional authorities, then justice has fundamentally reorganized around his presence.