Publisher Pushes Police Foundation to New Heights

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The New York Sun

A gala tonight for the New York City Police Foundation, a charity that supports crime-fighting endeavors of the city’s police department, is expected to raise more than $1.5 million for the second straight year, an unprecedented figure that highlights the accomplishments of the charity’s leading lady.

Valerie Salembier, who is better known as the publisher of Harper’s Bazaar, has spearheaded fundraising campaigns that have taken in more than $15 million and overseen major changes in the role of the foundation since taking over as chairwoman in 2004.

Begun as an anti-corruption measure following the findings of the Knapp Commission in the 1970s, the foundation now finances numerous police initiatives that the department could not otherwise afford, including an international counterterrorism program and undercover anti-counterfeit operations.

At tonight’s gala at the Waldorf-Astoria, a ticket costs $1,500 and co-chairmen who have purchased tables for $50,000 include Robert DeNiro, Jared Kushner, and Beth Rudin DeWoody. According to a column published Monday by a longtime New York City police reporter, Leonard Levitt, the annual benefit used to be held at 1 Police Plaza and tickets ran $100 each. Ms. Salembier’s success as the chairwoman of the foundation parallels her reputation in the publishing business as a turnaround specialist, colleagues say. Since Ms. Salembier left Esquire for Harper’s Bazaar in 2003, advertising at the magazine has soared by 79% through 2007, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

“I’m one of the lucky few people I know who has been able to take my avocation and merge it and meld it with my vocation,” she said during an interview at her office at Harper’s Bazaar.

Until recently, Ms. Salembier had mostly kept a low profile as chairwoman of the foundation. But when The New York Sun in January first reported that the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the union that represents city’s police officers, had sought to end a $5 million scholarship program for rookie officers backed by the foundation, Ms. Salembier was outspoken in her criticism. She called the step “incomprehensible.”

“Don’t even get me started again,” Ms. Salembier warned when asked about the move last week.

When Ms. Salembier presides over the gala this evening, she will have just flown back to the city after a trip to Brussels, where she was invited to speak at a global anti-counterfeiting summit. With backing and resources from Harper’s Bazaar, Ms. Salembier has made it her mission to tackle counterfeiting, copying, and piracy, a $600 million-a-year illegal business that she says not only hurts designers, manufacturers, and tax collectors, but also often relies on child labor.

Under Ms. Salembier’s tutelage, the Police Foundation has also begun providing funds to the city’s police department for anti-counterfeiting operations. The foundation finances costly buys made by undercover detectives.

“Valerie Salembier has done remarkable work in expanding the role of the Foundation to meet the city’s post-September 11th security needs,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. “She has provided the vision and leadership we need in our partnership with the private sector.”

Ms. Salembier says she became intrigued with police work while serving as president of the New York Post in the 1980s, where she met and befriended a number of police officers who made frequent visits to the newspaper’s former offices near police headquarters.

But it was as a child growing up in what she described as an anti-Semitic Hackensack, N.J., that Ms. Salembier gained a lifelong respect for law enforcement.

“There was one Jewish cop in town and at our dinner table he was the hero,” Ms. Salembier said.


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