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DPD cancels breakfast with Mavs CEO over wording in e-mail

A gesture meant for unity instead was met with rejection and demands for an apology from some officers of the Dallas Police Department.

Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall led a small group to deliver breakfast tacos and donuts to DPD headquarters on Wednesday morning, but instead were turned away by the department.

Her grassroots organization BB725 stands for 7 lives lost, 2 black and 5 blue. The reference is to two black men killed by police and the five Dallas officers who died all in the same week back in July 2016.

Marshall identified July 25 as a day to hand out black and blue wristbands to remember the lives lost and unite the community.

An email went out to Dallas Police officers on Tuesday promoting the breakfast and shortly after Sgt. George Aranda said he started receiving calls.

"You have a lot of officers that are upset," Aranda said.

The head of the Dallas chapter of the National Latino Law Enforcement Organization said officers took offense with the wording of the email that he says came from Marshall via the Mavericks.

It said in part, "BB725 7/25 represents the 7 who died July 5,6,7 2016 - 2 died because they were black, 5 died because they wore blue."

“It’s inappropriate, it’s uncalled for, it’s just at the wrong time," Aranda said.

Aranda says emotions are still raw for DPD, just four days after losing Sr. Cpl. Jamie Givens at the hands of a suspected drunk driver, just three months after Officer Rogelio Santander was killed in the line of duty answering a theft call at a Home Depot in Northeast Dallas.

So the NLLEO took to social media calling on DPD to cancel the breakfast.

DPD sent out an email a short time later abruptly canceling the breakfast.

Instead Marshall and her organization delivered breakfast to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas and made a donation of $7,250 that was originally intended for the Dallas Police Youth Foundation.

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