The daughter of former tough-on-crime Mayor Rudy Giuliani was busted yesterday for pilfering products from a trendy cosmetics store near her Upper East Side home, police said.

Caroline Giuliani, 20, a theater student at Harvard, was caught on security cameras at Sephora on East 86th Street allegedly stuffing makeup into her jacket pocket shortly before 2 p.m.

She was confronted by a sales clerk and a store security guard, who called cops.

Sources said she allegedly stole five items, worth slightly more than $100. She had about $320 on her, they added.

As security waited for cops, Caroline handed over her ID and said, “I’m an actress,” a police source said. When asked if she was related to the former mayor, she replied, “Yes, I’m his daughter.”

At that point, store managers had a change of heart — but it was too late.

The daughter of the man credited with slashing crime in New York City was hauled out in handcuffs in an NYU shirt and taken to the 19th Precinct station house. She was charged with petit larceny and released last night with a desk-appearance ticket and a future court date.

“Once we review the case, we will decide whether or not to file a criminal complaint,” said Erin Duggan, a spokeswoman for Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. Caroline flashed an uncomfortable smirk as she left the station house in a red cardigan sweater, black sweatpants and white sneakers with no laces. Her clearly upset mother, former TV reporter Donna Hanover, was at her side.

Caroline’s arrest stunned Sephora shoppers.

“She passed by and she didn’t say anything. Her head was down,” said Dominic Zawada, 25, who was in the store during the arrest. “They [cops] were holding her really tight.”

Detectives rummaged through her bag while she was being led out.

A Sephora spokeswoman, Jodi Balkan, declined to comment on the arrest.

Rudy Giuliani, who did not come to the station house, said through a spokeswoman, “This is a personal matter, and Mayor Giuliani asks the media to respect the privacy of his daughter at this time.”

Caroline Giuliani, a self-described liberal, drew headlines in 2008 when she slapped her GOP presidential-candidate father in the face by throwing her support behind Barack Obama on her Facebook page.

Since her father’s public divorce from Hanover and his marriage to Judith Nathan, the ex-mayor’s relationship with Caroline and his son, Andrew, has been strained.

Caroline, in fact, has shunned her famous last name. Two years ago, a Harvard alumni mag referred to her as Caroline Hanover, and her Facebook page lists her as Caroline Rose G.

Additional reporting by Edmund DeMarche

larry.celona@nypost.com

