For a city that prides itself on its peaceful streets, it's been an alarming few months - corners of Toronto descending into the sort of violence typically associated with American ghettos, kids and bus drivers caught in the crossfire, case after case unsolved because witnesses are too intimidated to come forward. And just when the bloodshed seemed to have slowed after an overheated summer, the past few days have seen another rash of gunfire.

What's much scarier than the reality, though, is the perception. Torontonians have long had a slightly hysterical inclination to view themselves as under siege. Five years ago, 66% of respondents told pollsters that they believed "Toronto is becoming more violent compared to five years ago" - even though, in 2000, the violent crime rate was 4.5% lower than it had been in 1995. So the fact that 87% now agree with the same statement, according to the new National Post/Global News/CFRB poll, is not in itself all that disturbing.

Where things get scarier is in the degree to which Torontonians now consider violent crime to be the city's most pressing problem, and the manner in which it is apparently affecting their day-to-day lives.

Two years ago, with just 15% of respondents identifying violence and gun crime as the most important issue facing their city, only 22% said they felt unsafe walking alone in their neighbourhoods after dark. Today, with more than half the city now listing crime as Toronto's most pressing issue, 36% are afraid to venture out once the sun goes down - including 46% of women.

This is no longer a vague sense that there are bad people somewhere in the city doing bad things. It's a growing, tangible fear about stepping outside our doors.

One can make the case ad nauseum - some of us already have - that the fears are often unjustified. With crime increasingly centralized in a few areas (particularly Jane/Finch, Rexdale and pockets of Scarborough), most Torontonians' neighbourhoods are no less safe than they ever were; some are probably safer, especially considering that until this year the homicide rate was steadily (if marginally) declining.

But statistics are infinitely less powerful than sights and sounds. And when the evening news and morning papers are constantly filled with stories about nightclub shootouts and drive-by attacks, even those at little risk adopt the under-siege mentality. Rational or not, few parents can hear about four-year-old Shaquan Cadougan getting shot playing outside without thinking about their own kids' safety.

The danger is that the perception of Toronto's streets being overrun with violent thugs threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Visit many U.S. cities and you'll find their cores all but abandoned. Once-vibrant neighbourhoods have been reduced to virtual slums, home only to the poor and dominated by the drug trade, gang warfare and every other form of crime imaginable.

There, it's often been branded "white flight;" in multicultural Toronto that term might not apply as well. But we risk very much the same phenomenon. The more convinced we become that our streets are unsafe, the more those with the means to do so will head elsewhere, and others will simply venture out less. The result could be that a criminal element really does start having the run of the streets.

With downtown property a hotter commodity than ever, it's not quite an imminent possibility in most areas. But already, flight has played a big part in turning once middle-class areas into gang turf. And if nearly half of all women in Toronto fear for their safety on their own streets, it may only be a matter of time before more families start heading elsewhere.

Ordinarily, it's best not to base public policy debates on the latest poll. And clearly, the general public doesn't have any clearer answers on violent crime than politicians: After placing "poverty" and "lack of adequate funding for recreational facilities and youth programs" above "lack of police presence" (but below the evils of pop culture), Ipsos Reid's respondents proceeded to contradict themselves by emphatically stating that an increased police presence should be the biggest priority.

But on this issue, nothing is more important than public sentiment - or, more accurately, public fear. If the rational fears of law-abiding citizens in Toronto's most troubled communities haven't been incentive enough to get serious about crime, hopefully the somewhat less rational fears of everyone else will be.