A city effort to curtail gang violence in the District’s Columbia Heights and Shaw communities has been astonishingly successful, officials said Wednesday: There have been no Hispanic gang-related homicides in D.C. since Oct. 9, 2003.

The Gang Intervention Partnership was launched in the summer 2003 to address skyrocketing violence among Hispanic gangs in an area from Howard University to just north of Columbia Heights — along Metro’s Green Line — where virtually all Hispanic gangs are based. The last homicide occurred inOctober 2003, the result of a five block-long gun battle that killed a young man and injured a bus driver.