In 1984 Eng was a candidate in the Ward 6 by-election to fill John Sewell's vacated seat on Toronto City Council.
She attracted support from the Progressive Conservative Party's Larry Grossman and Susan Fish and from Liberal Jim Coutts.
[3] Eng was first appointed to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board in 1989 by the Liberal government of David Peterson.
The rank-and-file strongly supported McCormack in this dispute, and a group of officers who had set up a vigil for one of their own killed on duty booed Eng when she showed up.
Ben had gone against Metro Toronto Police policy and compiled statistics on the criminal activities of recent refugees from Vietnam and mainland China, finding that this relatively small group of people was involved in a disproportionately high number of crimes in Metro and reporting this to the Toronto Crime Inquiry.