If you know a cop, you know a hero.

And today, heroes are getting fired for a new kind of bravery: telling the truth about black crime and black on white racial hostility.

They already have enough to do: George Orwell famously said “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

In Salt Lake City, it is going to take a crowbar to remove the police department t-shirts from the backs of two grateful 20-something sisters who were recently attacked and stabbed by a black intruder. A cop rushed in and killed the predator as he tensed to thrust his knife into one of the sisters. Again. Probably for the final time.

There is a lot of that going around. Both the violence and the heroism.

But at least two cops around the country are now heroes for another reason: they told the truth. And they were fired for it.

The first hero is Lori Lavorato, the former spokeswoman for the police in Des Moines, Iowa. A few years ago, at the Iowa State Fair, large groups of black people created havoc and violence in and out of the fair for three nights.

In their wake, they left a fractured skull, dozens of black on white assaults, property destruction, defiance, and two hospitalized cops. All at, yes, the Iowa State Fair.

When reporters wanted to know why all the black people were violently attacking white people, Lavorato told it the way it was: “In the police report it states that a group of black males and females were out at the fair yelling ‘it’s beat whitey night’.

The police chief said truth was not the “messaging” she wanted. So Lavorato had to go.

Soon after, Lavorato was transferred to the records division, which in cop-talk means she was fired -- For Telling The Truth about black mob violence and mayhem.

She is now selling real estate.

Telling the truth about black on white crime is not a given for public officials and reporters. It is an exception.

In Minneapolis, when I asked the police PR guy if everyone involved in the hundreds of episodes of black mob violence in downtown Minneapolis was black, he said rather indignantly that his department did not pay attention to that kind of thing.

Which of course was not true -- the police department’s own web site even refers to black people as “protected minorities.”

In Delaware, 400 black people at a party organized by black promoters for students at black schools were firing guns, engaging in violence, and threatening police. When I called the state police and asked if everyone was black, he said his officers never noticed.

In Hartford, 500 black people at an “All Black Affair” rampaged through downtown. Public officials say they were too busy maintaining order to notice if everyone was black.

In Chicago, hundreds of black people were rampaging through a beach on Memorial Day. It became so dangerous, police shut the beach down because it was “too hot.” Later that week, a local radio station put the lie to that whopper by broadcasting the 911 calls that talked about the widespread -- and largely ignored -- racial violence that day in that place.

In Louisville, hundreds of black people rampaged through downtown, assaulting grandparents, parents, children, store owners, police, even cheerleaders in town for a convention. The mayor claimed nothing like that had ever happened there before.

When reporters figured out that was not true, he said “not recently.”

When reporters figured out that was not true, he said “not at that scale.”

When reporters figured out that was not true, he said “not in that neighborhood.”

By the time reporters figured out that was not true, a police bureaucrat released a report detailing racial violence in Louisville, and how it was happening all over the city all the time.

All these episodes -- and thousands more -- of denial, deceit and delusion are detailed in Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry: The hoax of black victimization.

More recently in Surf City, North Carolina, police chief Michael Halstead was fired from his 35-year career in law enforcement after going on Facebook to call out Black Lives Matter as “nothing more than an American born terrorist group.”

Which of course puts him on the opposite side of President Obama, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Rand Paul and lots of other public officials and reporters who say Black Lives Matter is a legitimate group with legitimate goals.

Because everyone knows that lots of cops are attacking black people for No Reason What So Ever. This is the same crowd that believes lots of black people are in prison for No Reason What So Ever.

And as for all the anti-cop rhetoric -- some of which calls for “dead cops?” Often accompanied by violence?

That just proves how much we need the Black Lives Matter mob, they say.

President Obama is proud of his support for Black Lives Matter. He calls stories of elevated black crime and violence “anecdotal” and says a history of racism in America justifies whatever Black Lives Matter says or does.

It matters to Chief Halstead.

After he was fired this month, Chief Halstead broke it down on Fox and Friends: Black Lives Matter is “a terrorist group if you can march down the streets and call for the deaths of police officers," he said, pointing to videos showing protesters chanting, "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" and chanting about "dead cops.”

Both of those officers knew the risks to themselves their careers before speaking out about the threat of black violence and Black Lives Matter. Both knew the people they were sworn to serve needed to know what reporters and public officials most often try to ignore, deny, condone, excuse, encourage and even lie about: that black crime is wildly out of proportion.

They took the risk. They paid the price. That is what heroes do.

Colin Flaherty is the author of that scintillating best seller, Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry: The hoax of black victimization. Subscribe to his YouTube channel by clicking here.