Long Island’s oldest, highly battle-tested police force turns 150

They’re true blue.

Long Island’s oldest police force, the Hempstead Village PD, is celebrating 150 years of keeping Nassau County streets safe — after dealing with decades of hardcore crime, gang beefs and a staggering influx of drugs.

“We’ve met every challenge, whether it was heroin distribution in the 60s, all the way through the crack epidemic from around 1985 to the mid-90s,” Hempstead Village Police Chief Richard Holland told The Post.

“Fortunately, we haven’t had the serial killer kind of thing,” he joked, referring to the Gilgo Beach murders over in Suffolk County.

The Hempstead Village Police Department was formed in 1875 after nearly two decades of civilians volunteering to patrol their own streets.

But the force began seeing most of its grittiest action start about half a century ago, according to the village brass.

Mayor Waylyn Hobbs, who used to work in code enforcement in the 1980s, had personally seen how rough things were at the time.

“I know that there was a huge drug-related arrest; so big that they rounded up so many people that they had to use Kennedy Park for processing,” he said of the area that spaciously fits a football field, pool and tennis courts.

“One of the big things then also was prostitution,” Hobbs added of the crime that has since slowed down. “The police department used to have undercover female officers to catch the Johns.”

Gang violence was also a recurring issue, particularly around 2005, when a violent uptick in beef between the Bloods and Crips resulted in the arrest of nearly 15 gang members on both sides.

The incident had the Hempstead PD evolve its policing strategy, forming partnerships with the feds — including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI’s gangs taskforce and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — to tackle serious crime, Holland said.

Interagency teamwork also yielded major narcotics busts in current times — such as the arrest of drug ring running resident Darren Devane in 2019.

Hempstead PD, along with the FBI ATF, and Nassau County law enforcement seized about 400,000 grams of fentanyl — estimated to cause potentially 150,000 overdoses — from the Bloods gang member after a months-long operation.

“It was the largest fentanyl seizure on Long Island at the time,” Holland said of the bust, that resulted in Devane being sentenced to 22 years behind bars in 2023.

Emerging policing technologies, such as a newly deployed drone, are also being used to keep locals safe nowadays.

“We had a success story with it just last week. We knew the individual, we saw the individual threw away a gun. We couldn’t track him down, but we were able to find him with the drone,” Holland said.

“We’re actually being proactive now with our drone, going to our [crime] hotspots,” he added.

That, and the recent restoration of a K9 unit, are some of the reasons Holland credits a year-to-date 34% drop in robberies — and also why Hempstead Village has only had one annual gun-related homicide in the past three years.

“That’s been a record for us,” the chief said.

Hobbs lauded the department’s 125 officers for making a difference in heroic ways — even ones that don’t always make headlines, such as a gun arrest he mentioned took place at a local home in July.

“Somebody inside the house pointed a gun in the face of our detectives. He was able to disarm them without shooting them,” the mayor said.

“I think that’s amazing that they showed restraint, got two guns off the street, and had nobody get hurt — including our officers.”