What Exactly Is A 'Promiscuous Shooting'?

Each Monday the Danville Police Department sends Danville Patch an "incident summary report," which is a summary log of calls placed by residents or actions taken by officers throughout the week.

You then read our summary on it that .

Each Monday, when pursuing this log, a phrase pops up that has left us scratching our heads and our readers asking us questions. That phrase is "promiscuous shooting."

Both words -- "promiscuous" and "shooting" -- are fairly provocative that will absolutely perk someone's ears up.

So to get a definition of what exactly a "promiscuous shooting" is, we sat down with the Danville Chief of Police Steve Simpkins.

What we found out wasn't nearly as provocative as the two words may suggest.

When you make a call to report reckless driving or a disturbance in the area, the dispatcher taking the call logs in a description. For example, you wake up to your car burglarized it's a "burglary from an auto." Or you're a shop owner and a shoplifter is caught taking something under $950, it's a "petty theft" -- over $950 it's considered "grand theft."

Well, if you hear a loud noise and you call the police department, that loud noise is logged as a "promiscuous shooting."

"It's really an indiscriminate noise," Simpkins said. "It could be a car backfiring, fireworks. It could start out as a transformer blowing up. ... It's an indiscriminate noise that could be shots."

Simpkins said officers are always dispatched to where this noise may have been heard. "When the resident hears something, maybe heard a shot or another random noise, we come check it out," he said. "We drive around the neighborhood. Do what we can to check it out."

So, it's not always a shot, but it can be. It's a random noise, indiscriminate... it's promiscuous. Residents, however, are still encouraged to report these indiscriminate noises and any suspicious circumstances.