"Freedom" is overrated in this case- I'd feel safer walking down the street in Singapore at 4am than the streets of San Francisco, hell there are streets in San Francisco where I wouldn't feel safe at noon.
That is a surprising aspect of San Francisco. Went there for the first time in October and wandered into basically a ghetto downtown. I'm not sure if US cities are the best comparison. That said, there are a lot of other good cities with strong business communities in the world that are quite safe. It seems a bit disingenuous to suggest the trade-off is between authoritarian government and safety.