cambridge homic via mark murray.jpg

Springfield police investigators are shown here at the scene of a March 28 homicide on Cambridge Street in the city's Bay neighborhood, the scene of recent gun violence that has led to beefed-up patrols around the American International College campus. The Cambridge Street homicide was the most recent killing in Springfield, which managed to go homicide-free in April after nine murders in the first three months of 2015.

(MARK M. MURRAY / THE REPUBLICAN FILE)

SPRINGFIELD — The city logged nine homicides in the opening three months of 2015, marking one of the worst first quarters in recent memory.

But the last killing was on March 28 – a so-called "house party gone bad," as city police Commissioner John Barbieri put it – and there hasn't been a homicide since then. In that incident, a 23-year-old man was stabbed to death at a Cambridge Street house party, but police have never publicly identified the victim.

The accelerated pace of killings, the likes of which Springfield had not seen in years, led to expanded policing measures and renewed efforts to get law enforcement and the communities they police on the same page.

The C3 policing initiative was expanded into other city crime hotspots, including the Forest Park, South End and Mason Square neighborhoods. C3 is an intensive form of community policing that involves officers building bridges with the neighborhood residents they police, a personalized approach that has been credited with reducing crime rates in the North End, the birthplace of the program.

On Friday, as April officially went down in the books as a homicide-free month, MassLive / The Republican reached out to Mayor Domenic Sarno for comment on whether he believes the expanded policing initiatives are helping to curb the violence. But the mayor, through his communications director Jim Leydon, declined to comment.

Springfield almost went homicide-free for the first three months of 2014, logging its first case on March 22. This year, however, there were two killings in January, two in February and five in March.