For three years Comfort Sakoma sat on the Vancouver Police Board, most recently as vice chair.
“When I started on the board, I will say that I was extraordinarily excited,” Sakoma told Global News.
“I was brought on at a time when I think there was a lot of conversation that needed to be had within my community.”
Then two weeks ago, she was asked to resign due to online posts about immigration and religion, which the board said were inconsistent with its code of conduct.
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“You know, it started with obviously the public announcement made by the board chair that I had been asked to resign,” she said.
“Morphed into sort of a lot of public criticism and very hurtful and hateful statements by the public that then sort of moved and became a lot of public support.”
Now the board has released financial statements from her trip to Halifax for two conferences, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Much of it is redacted, but they show she charged approximately $11,600 for the trip and paid back about $3,400.
“As I speak to you today, I can confirm that absolutely no board member of the Vancouver Police Board has received any form of a travel expense policy,” she said.
“So ultimately, what happened was I was kind of told, go do what you got to do. When you get back. We’ll reconcile. We’ll figure it out when you get back. And that’s exactly what happened. And I upheld my commitment in terms of any sort of payments.”
So far, the Vancouver Police Board is not commenting on the recent financial disclosures.
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