Usually we tell you what happened over the weekend. Today, the story is what didn't happen - for what appears to be the first time since early April, there were no killings over the weekend in Baltimore.

I consider the weekend to be, generally, Friday afternoon through early Monday morning (that being essentially late Sunday night). Since the homicide-free weekend of April 2-5, there's been at least one and as many as seven killings per weekend in the city. In fact, the bursts of weekend violence became so severe that police started tailoring new strategies to curb them and Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III demanded "more urgency" from officers.

Did the strategies work? Is it an anomaly, or just the change in weather? Time will tell, and there were still at least two non-fatal shootings. But a weekend without death is a positive worth noting.

For the year, killings are at 151, compared to 161 at this time last year - about 6 percent. In the past two years, there have been big upticks in November and December (November was the deadliest month of the year for 2009 and 2008), and if that can be avoided, Baltimore has a chance to turn in solid declines.