PITTSBURGH — A former Pennsylvania police officer has been sentenced to house arrest and probation for violating the civil rights of a man he threw to the ground and slugged.

Norman Howard III, 43, was ordered by a federal judge in Pittsburgh on Monday to spend three years on probation, with the first six months on house arrest.

Howard was an officer in Redstone Township in May 2013 when prosecutors said he followed a car home when a man inside the vehicle gestured at him. Howard acknowledged in October that he violated the man’s rights in the assault.

Howard had agreed to never work as a police officer again in exchange for prosecutors dropping the civil rights charge from a felony to a misdemeanor, and prosecutors, in turn, didn’t object to probation.

“He doesn’t want to be a police officer anymore. It’s not a good time to be a police officer,” defense attorney Charles Porter Jr. said. “And the government doesn’t want him to be a police officer, so I think their interests dovetailed.”

“I’d like to get this behind me and move on with my life,” Howard said.