Around three-quarters of Toronto and GTA residents say they want more officers on the streets while at the same time favouring to keep police budgets steady, a new poll finds.The Canada Pulse Insights poll conducted for CityNews found 73 per cent of Torontonians and 76 per cent of GTA residents surveyed agree there needs to be more police officers on the streets.However, 59 per cent and 60 per cent of Toronto and GTA residents, respectively, prefer to keep their community’s policing budget at the same level.The poll appears to show a tension between wanting more police presence in their community amid a growing concern about violence, while also not want to pay more for policing.“People want more presence on their streets and in the TTC, that’s evident, but they’re not willing to pay a lot more for it. You’re actually getting a more firm block of people in the city who say, ‘enough is enough, I don’t want to pay any more for this, I want more evidence that what I’m paying for is actually yielding the results,'” John Wright, CEO of Canada Pulse Insights, told CityNews.The poll also found 87 per cent and 91 per cent of Toronto and GTA residents, respectively, feel that there are too many repeat offenders being granted bail, with 54 per cent in Toronto and 61 per cent saying they “agree strongly.”Fear of violence on public transit was also widespread, in particular in Toronto, with 63 per cent saying “they are afraid of being a victim of violence on public transit,” while 53 per cent of GTA residents feeling the same say.“If you’re looking at what people are seeing and experiencing on either public transit or the sense that the bail system is not working, where those things meet the rubber on the road is literally with beat cops. They want to have more presence but they don’t necessarily want to pay for it,” Wright said.This latest poll comes on the heels of a previous Canada Pulse Insights survey released on Tuesday, which found that more than one-third of Torontonians don’t feel safe walking around their own neighbourhood after dark.In that poll, Toronto residents who were surveyed rank crime, policing, and public safety as the second most important issue facing the city, after affordability and the cost of living.Public safety is a key election issue in the Toronto mayoral race, one that candidates Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford have both vowed to prioritize. Here’s a closer look at their respective plans and promises.The latest poll released Thursday was conducted among 510 adult residents of the City of Toronto and 825 adult residents of the Greater Toronto Area outside Toronto — the City of Mississauga and the regional municipalities of Durham, York, Halton and Peel. The margin of error for a probability-based sample of this size is ±4.3 percentage points for Toronto and ±3.4 for the GTA, 19 times out of 20.With files from Michael Talbot, CityNews