Peter Liang (left) walks out the court after the judge sentenced him to five years of probation and 800 hours of community service. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

Ex-New York City police officer Peter Liang was sentenced to five years probation and at least 800 hours community service on Tuesday in the shooting death of an unarmed black man in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project in 2014.

New York State Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun could have sentenced Liang, 28, to up to 15 years behind bars. He reduced Liang's manslaughter conviction to criminally negligent homicide before sentencing him.

Chun basically followed the recommendation of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, who had recommended last month that Liang be sentenced to five years of probation, with the condition that he serves six months of home confinement with electric monitoring, and 500 hours of community service. Thompson was not in the courtroom for the sentencing.

Outside the courthouse, more than 200 cops - including those from the NYPD's counterterrorism unit - were stationed and metal barricades erected to control potential clashes between Liang supporters and protesters.

In a letter to the judge last month, Thompson said that Liang's "reckless actions caused an innocent man to lose his life. There is no evidence, however, that he intended to kill or injure Akai Gurley.

"The sentence that I have requested is just and fair under the circumstances of this case. From the beginning, this tragic case has always been about justice and not about revenge," he said.

Liang was 18 months out of the police academy when he was patrolling a public housing project in Brooklyn, New York, in November 2014. He fired once and the bullet ricocheted, striking Akai Gurley, 28, who died at the scene. Liang was fired from the police department after he was convicted of manslaughter in February in the shooting.

Liang, who always dreamed of becoming a police officer, became the first New York City officer since 2005 to be convicted in a shooting in the line of duty.

Liang testified in his own defense that he was terrified and never meant to shoot anyone. Both he and his partner said they felt unqualified to help Gurley as he lay bleeding on the stairwell floor. Gurley's girlfriend gave him CPR as a neighbor yelled instructions from a 911 operator on the telephone.

Last week, Liang's attorneys sought to have the case thrown out based on juror misconduct after Michael Vargas, a juror on the panel that convicted Liang, told lawyers during the jury selection process that no one in his family had been accused of a crime. But after the verdict, he told a newspaper that his father was sent to prison for accidentally shooting a friend to death. But Chun ruled that Vargas did not intentionally lie to the court and he said the manslaughter conviction would stand.