Drug pushing has long been a stain on Washington Square Park, declassing its iconic arch and proximity to NYU.

Parents from around the world pay some $93,000 per year for their children to attend the august institution, despite hardened street dealers operating in all-too-close proximity.

While street performers sharpen their acts, chess players position pieces on stone tables and NYU kids enjoy the park as a de facto campus, there have always been shadowy dudes hissing about their loose joints and cut-rate bags of blow.

But what may have started as a few hippie types dealing pot in the 60s has now morphed into a full-on organized crime operation. And last month, that resulted in the alleged homicide of Bailey Shaw, a promising teenager from Aspen, Colorado, through a suspected overdose, prompting the DEA to step in. What they found was mind blowing.

“We knew that Shaw had traveled to New York for a prestigious internship and died only days after arriving,” Frank A. Tarentino III, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York division, told The Post.

“We also knew that her source of narcotics was Washington Square Park. Because the threat [of drugs sold in the park] was real and caused the death of an 18-year-old, we looked more closely at the park.”

The DEA’s overall effort resulted in the coordinated arrest of 19 Washington Square Park drug traffickers – guys with nicknames like Scarface, Bizzy and Hollywood.

Their investigation unearthed fresh details on how the neighborhood oasis thrived as an around-the-clock drug supermarket where transactions totaled $16,000 to $20,000 per day. According to the indictment, since 2020, millions of doses of fentanyl and heroin as well as millions of doses of crack cocaine were distributed from inside the park.

Tarentino said what is being sold in the park has changed. “Ten or 15 years ago, street level drug dealing in the park included marijuana, cocaine and heroin,” he said.

Then he added that one change on the narcotics menu amped up the stakes: Fentanyl, a highly dangerous synthetic opioid which only takes a miniscule amount to overdose on.

“When you introduce fentanyl into the equation, you increase the threat level,” said Tarentino. “People are dying more regularly from street level distribution.”

Cops say fentanyl was the blame in the fatal overdoses of at least two celebrity offspring who died in 2023 – Akira Stein, the daughter of Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, and Leandro De Niro Rodriguez, grandson of Robert De Niro.

The dealers who sold the poisoned doses to both are part of a separate group from the main Washington Square crews, but were also rounded up in the DEA bust.

Before dying, according to the New York Times, Stein ODed and recovered. She then texted her dealer to apologize for having such an adverse reaction. Acting like he was comforting her, the dealer told Akira not to be sorry. She was dead from another overdose soon after.

Those apprehended by the DEA have been charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death. All told, since 2020, the defendants have been arrested a total of 80 times for drug related offenses, records show.

Those past arrests assisted law enforcement in identifying and finding the defendants, who are now being held in federal facilities, such as Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Authorities say the drug distribution itself has gotten more sophisticated and increasingly difficult to track.

Dealing in Washington Square Park may previously have been a mishmash of small-time crooks peddling weak drugs to tourists, that is no longer the case.

According to an indictment, the park is now controlled by two groups: the Bloods Team (a subset of the notorious West Coast Bloods gang) and the Livigni Team, which is allegedly overseen by John Livigni, an alleged 25-year veteran of Washington Square Park drug dealing, according to The Times.

Elana Fast, the attorney for Livigni, told The Post her client has entered a not-guilty plea but offered no further comment.

Below the leaders of the two groups were managers who oversaw the street dealers and made sure that no drugs were stolen. With the operations conveniently fluid, workers would shift from one team to the other as needed, and warn each other if law enforcement appeared to be closing in.

Aware of how deadly their drugs were, some of the dealers even carried Narcan, which can reverse opioid overdoses, to administer to customers if needed.

Further describing the operation, Tarentino said the dealers “were using several cash apps,” which provided anonymity and allowed them to avoid cash being handed off in public. It also helped erase suspicious wads of bills in the pockets of suspected dealers.

“They had a sophisticated system for passing drugs to the intended users, to the substance-use dependent person. They would sometimes use the customers to insulate themselves from law enforcement,” he added.

One simple technique was for the dealer to drop the drugs, wadded up in paper, onto the ground and look away as the customer picked it up. The customer would have already paid a third party, or sent money via one of the apps.

The gangs controlled what happens in the park as far as drug dealing is concerned, with all freelance operators muscled out.

“It’s pretty typical of street gangs,” said Tarentino. “They’re opportunists. Wherever and however they can make money, establish dominance — over territory or inter-gang rivalries — they will do it. And you cannot traffic in that park without their knowledge and without their approval. It’s their territory.”

Those who did allegedly work for The Bloods and Livigni occupied specific areas in and around Washington Square, selling their drugs in variously colored bags, providing levels of brand recognition.

Surrounding Shaw’s fatally overdosed body: A smattering of purple tinged bags.

Getting all the drugs into the square required a much wider network.

“We believe the wholesale distribution network existed in the Bronx and that drugs came down from there,” said Tarentino.

The dealers generally came down from somewhere else as too and “did not tend to live in the Village,” per authorities, meaning they commuted to their jobs just like most every other worker in New York.

“The drugs could have easily been broken down [cut with other substances and put into small-quantity bags] in apartments near where they lived. Then they put the drugs into pockets or backpacks and transport them to the park,” Tarentino said.

He told The Post the coordinated arrests have, for now at least, had a chilling effect on dealing activity in and around Washington Square. He was there last week and reports that it “seemed pretty good.”

Responding to an increased police presence in the park, Washington Square Association President Trevor Sumner enthused, “It’s about damn time! For the first time in years, I’ve seen optimism among the residents.”

Police are optimistic too. “My goal is to kick them out of the Sixth Precinct entirely,” the new local commanding officer, Capt. Nicholas D. Minor, recently told a cheering crowd of Village residents.

However, Tarentino is realistic enough to know criminals don’t walk away from a lucrative area and potential profits without a fight.

“We’ll continue to evaluate and continue to work with the Sixth Precinct to figure out if there has been a reemergence of drug trafficking,” said Tarentino. “We created a void. So, who’s going to try to take over that void?”

The question hangs for a beat before Tarentino answers himself: “If anyone tries to reclaim that territory, we’re going to have to do the same thing [in terms of making arrests] … Not just pushing the criminal conduct someplace else but eliminating it.”