There is relief among New York's Chinese-American community after a judge decided former New York Police Department officer Peter Liang will not serve prison time for the death of an unarmed black man killed in the stairwell of a housing project.

When former police officer Peter Liang was found guilty in February of reckless manslaughter, residents of Chinatown were angry and frustrated.

Now, an entirely different mood a day after a New York judge reduced Liang's charge to criminally negligent homicide and sentenced Liang to five years probation and 800 hours of community service with no prison time, over the shooting death of Akai Gurley in 2014.

At the Lin Sing Association, a Chinese-American club, members of Liang's legal team spoke to reporters.

"It is an extraordinary thing that so many people signed letters and made contributions and bucked him up through this and I think that it meant the world to him," said Rae Koshetz, Peter Liang's lawyer.

Chinatown is where Peter Liang grew up and where the community rallied behind him. The news that he won't go to jail marks a major win. But others say the fight is far from over. He's still a convicted felon, and supporters say they'll keep working to completely clear his name.

"80 percent of our people are happy. But a few of them they're going to fight, we're going to fight. He's innocent, and we're going to fight until he's innocent. We're actually going to appeal for that," said Eddie Chiu, director of Lin Sing Association.

Peter Liang's lawyers say that's the plan to appeal for the conviction to be thrown out because they say Akai Gurley's death was an accident and not a crime. The prosecution says it, too, will appeal the judge's decision to reduce the verdict and hold the rookie police officer accountable.