Nassau County police arrested 35 people between April 15 and April 21, including 15 suspected gang members tied to the Bloods, Crips, MS-13 and Zoe Pound, County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced at a press conference Tuesday.
The sweep recovered 10 handguns, a knuckle knife, a bill counter, a kilo press and Oxycodone, according to Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder. Ryder said the department is pursuing additional gang-related arrests and described the operation as an ongoing initiative rather than a one-time roundup.
“As part of this gang initiative, we have taken nine, now 10 handguns off the street,” Ryder said. “When you bring gang violence to Nassau County, we answer. We have a zero tolerance for it. This is our gang.”
Among those named in the arrests was Keith Estrada, who police say is Crip-affiliated and is accused of stabbing someone last week. He’s facing charges of attempted murder and assault and has been remanded. Ryder also identified Damien Brown, Devon Perkins and Audubree Steele as having been arrested for allegedly possessing illegal firearms.
Four women were among those charged. Ryder identified them as Ariane Henry, Simone Williams, Malani Williams and Lyric Adiansing, and alleged all four are gang members who were involved in a fight during which they “gouged out” another woman’s eye. Gang membership among women in Nassau has received relatively little public attention from the department before now, and Ryder’s specific naming of the four suggests police consider them fully accountable participants, not peripheral figures.
Blakeman said one of those arrested was an undocumented migrant who will be charged with felonies and turned over to federal immigration enforcement. He didn’t specify which gang the individual was affiliated with.
The arrests are unrelated to a recent shooting at Eisenhower Park, Ryder said.
Blakeman used the press conference to criticize New York State’s cashless bail law and the Raise the Age legislation, arguing both contribute to a cycle of arrest and rapid release that lets repeat offenders stay active. He called it a “turnstile” of jailing and release. The Brennan Center for Justice disputes that framing, arguing that cashless bail promotes fairness and reduces unnecessary pretrial incarceration, and that the empirical record doesn’t support the claim that bail reform drives violent crime.
That policy argument isn’t new. Nassau officials have made it before. But 10 guns pulled off the street in one week is a concrete number, whatever the political context around it.
“I want to commend everybody who was involved in this effort on the part of our police department,” Blakeman said. “We are taking the fight to the gangs.”
Long Island Press first reported the full list of charges and the department’s confirmation that the sweep remains active.
Nassau County’s gang problem isn’t confined to one municipality or demographic. The Bloods and Crips have operated on Long Island for decades, and MS-13 became a particularly visible threat in Suffolk County during the mid-2000s before the federal government and local law enforcement pushed back hard. Zoe Pound, a Haitian-American gang with roots in South Florida, has a smaller footprint here but has shown up in Nassau cases before. The FBI’s National Gang Threat Assessment has consistently identified the New York metro area as a significant concentration point for multiple national street gangs, which makes local enforcement sweeps a recurring necessity rather than a solved problem.
Ryder’s tone at the press conference was deliberate. He named names, specified charges and made clear the department intended to keep going. Nassau County police have roughly 2,600 sworn officers patrolling a densely populated county of approximately 1.4 million residents, and the department has historically maintained a lower violent crime rate than comparable urban jurisdictions, though that comparison requires careful reading of how crimes get classified and reported.
None of that changes the basic facts here. Fifteen suspected gang members in custody. Ten illegal guns off Nassau streets. One attempted murder suspect remanded. The department says more arrests are coming, and given that Ryder specifically mentioned pursuing further initiatives, residents in affected communities should expect additional announcements before summer.