Detailed Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Problem:Melissa Butler, Akai Gurley's girlfriend, reads a statement in court during the sentencing of former police officer Peter Liang in New York, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. Liang, convicted in the accidental... (Associated Press) 
  
 NEW YORK (AP) — A former police officer who shot an unarmed man to death in a darkened stairwell was spared prison time Tuesday, and a judge reduced his manslaughter conviction to a lesser charge in a case that became a flashpoint for police accountability. 
  
 Peter Liang was sentenced to five years' probation and 800 hours of community service in the 2014 shooting of Akai Gurley, who was walking down a public housing stairway when Liang, a rookie officer, fired a bullet into the dark — by accident, he said. The bullet ricocheted and killed Gurley, 28. 
  
 Speaking softly, Liang told the court he never meant to fire the gun and apologized to Gurley's family. 
  
 "My life is forever changed," he added. "I hope you give me a chance to rebuild it." 
  
 Liang, 28, is the first New York City police officer convicted in an on-duty shooting in 11 years. A jury found him guilty this winter of a manslaughter charge carrying up to 15 years in prison. 
  
 But Brooklyn state Supreme Court Chun reduced the offense Tuesday to criminally negligent homicide, which carries up to four years in prison. He said prosecutors hadn't met the legal burden for the manslaughter charge: proving that Liang consciously disregarded a substantial, unjustifiable risk of death. 
  
 And, the judge said, there was no need for time behind bars. 
  
 "Given the defendant's background and how remorseful he is, it would not be necessary to incarcerate the defendant to have a just sentence in this case," Chun said. 
  
 Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson had recommended against prison for Liang, but the prosecutor said Tuesday he would appeal the judge's decision to reduce the conviction. 
  
 The shooting happened in a year of debate nationwide about police killings of unarmed black men, and activists have looked to Liang's prosecution as a counterweight to cases in which grand juries have declined to indict officers, including those who killed Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York. Like Brown and Garner, Gurley was black. Liang is Chinese-American. 
  
 Gurley's family said Liang had been let off lightly. 
  
 "There's no justice. Akai Gurley's life does not matter. Black lives do not matter," said an aunt, Hertensia Petersen. 
  
 Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called Liang's sentence "a deeply troubling message that police officers convicted of killing unarmed African-Americans will be held to a different, and more lenient, standard of justice" than others. 
  
 Meanwhile, Liang's supporters say he has been made a scapegoat for past injustices. More than 10,000 of his backers rallied in New York and across the U.S. after the verdict, protesting his conviction. 
  
 Dozens of demonstrators representing both sides gathered Tuesday on opposite sides of the street outside the courthouse, separated by police barricades. Insides, both prosecutors and Liang's lawyers cautioned against using the case to make a larger point about police conduct. 
  
 "This simply is not a case of police brutality. This case features a reckless shooting by a rookie police officer in a darkened stairwell," Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Joe Alexis said. 
  
 But Gurley's loved ones reminded the judge of the toll. 
  
 "Because of the recklessness of that night, I'm without my partner, our daughter is without her father, a mom is without her son," said Gurley's domestic partner, Kim Ballinger. 
  
 Gurley's girlfriend, Melissa Butler, who was with him when he died, told Liang: "When you stole Akai's life, you stole mine as well." 
  
 Liang's missteps after the shooting were detailed during the trial, including his failure to aid the bleeding Gurley as Butler frantically performed CPR. Liang and his partner, who wasn't charged and testified during the trial, said they didn't help because they weren't well-trained. Their admissions prompted Police Commissioner William Bratton to launch an investigation into training. 
  
 Liang was fired after the verdict. So was his partner. 
  
 Liang's attorneys had sought to get the verdict tossed out based on a juror's failure to disclose his own father's criminal history before the trial, but the judge refused. 
  
 ___ 
  
 Associated Press writers Tom Hays and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report. ||||| Speaking at the sentencing, Ballinger said, "My daughter Akaila is without a father, his mother is without a son. He was my partner, a great father. I'll never forget what Mayor de Blasio said to me that night — that Akai was innocent and should still be alive." |||||
Solution:
Facing 15 years in prison on a manslaughter conviction, NYPD officer Peter Liang will avoid jail, instead getting six months of house arrest and five years of probation, NPR reports. Liang, 28, was convicted of killing Akai Gurley in 2014 when he was startled by a noise while patrolling a housing project and fired into a darkened stairwell. The bullet ricocheted off a wall and hit Gurley. On Tuesday, Judge Danny Chun reduced Liang's sentence to criminally negligent homicide. “Given the defendant’s background and how remorseful he is, it would not be necessary to incarcerate the defendant to have a just sentence," the AP quotes Chun as saying. The district attorney, who lobbied the judge to keep Liang out of prison, was upset by the switch to criminally negligent homicide and plans to appeal, the New York Daily News reports. The decision also angered Gurley's family—his aunt stormed out of the courtroom—and protesters outside. In addition to house arrest and probation, Liang, who says he hopes to rebuild his life, was sentenced to 800 hours of community service.