By Andrew Kerr

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut deleted a tweet he posted Thursday condemning vigilantism, looting and police shootings of black people, saying it gave the false impression he was equating property damage to murder.

“This isn’t hard. Vigilantism is bad. Police officers shooting black people in the back is bad. Looting and property damage is bad,” Murphy wrote in the now-deleted tweet, which was posted Thursday morning. “You don’t have to choose. You can be against it all. You can just be for peace.”

Murphy said he deleted the tweet because it “mistakenly gave the impression that I thought there was an equivalency between property crime and murder.”

I don’t normally delete tweets, but just got rid of one that mistakenly gave the impression that I thought there was an equivalency between property crime and murder.

Of course I don’t think that. So I just took it down.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 27, 2020

Murphy deleted his condemnation of looting as riots have gripped Kenosha, Wisconsin, for days following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Looting and rioting also broke out in Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon after a homicide suspect committed suicide inside a shopping mall after he was surrounded by police.

Public support for protests has plummeted 25 points in Wisconsin since the police-custody death of George Floyd in late May, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Some 61% of Wisconsinites said they were in support of protests against police killings and 36% were against it in the Marquette Law School survey in June. Both figures dropped to 48% in a Marquette Law School survey conducted Aug. 4-9, before police shot Jacob Blake seven times in Kenosha.

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