An Indian American Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office sergeant in Tampa, Florida, has been fired and charged with a felony for aiming his handgun near a handcuffed black man’s head and threatening to kill him.

Sgt. Janak Amin, a 21-year veteran with the sheriff’s office, escalated to pulling out his gun when the handcuffed man refused to give him his name, according to Sheriff Chad Chronister, the Washington Post reported.

Amin was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon July 10 for threatening the life of the unarmed black man on July 9, Chronister said at a July 10 news conference, the Post reported.

Chronister called Amin’s behavior “despicable,” saying the man under arrest was not being aggressive with officers in any way.

He was only quiet — apparently enraging Amin, Chronister said at the news conference, according to the report.

“I assure you, he wasn’t being uncooperative,” the sheriff said of the victim, whom the sheriff declined to identify. “The bottom line is there is no reason, no rationale or justification why anyone had to point a gun at his head and threaten his life simply because he refused to identify himself.”

According to a tampabay.com report July 15, Amin’s attorney, Paul Sisco, told the Tampa Bay Times that Amin followed proper protocols during the arrest and that other witnesses will contradict the allegations Sheriff Chronister outlined at the news conference last week.

“This was a political opportunity in search of a set of facts and I am hugely disappointed by the sheriff’s premature actions and defamatory press conference,” Sisco is quoted as saying in the report.

The victim was under arrest in the first place because employees at the Hillsborough County Jail had accidentally released him, the Post report said.

Chronister said the man had been “inadvertently” transferred to DACCO Behavioral Health, a treatment facility in Tampa for those with substance-abuse or mental-health issues, where he was not supposed to be, the publication said.

He then left the facility.

Once the sheriff’s office realized the mistake, they went looking for him. They found him hiding behind a trailer, Chronister said in the report.

When officers confronted the man and put him in a “prone position” — lying flat on his stomach on the ground — the handcuffed man would not give his name, Chronister said, according to the report.

So Amin knelt down next to him. He drew his firearm and pointed it inches from the man’s head, the sheriff added.

Then, he told the man that if he refused to give his name, he would “splatter his brains all over the concrete,” the Post report said.

“He said those words,” Chronister said at the conference.

The victim said in a statement later that he didn’t give his name because he was “scared to death,” Chronister added in the report.

Chronister said he did not believe “this had anything to do” with the victim’s race.

The sheriff applauded the deputies on scene who reported Amin to the command staff immediately after witnessing his behavior.

He said they were following recent training requiring them to intervene when they witness excessive force by colleagues, according to the report.

That policy has been newly implemented at police departments across the country in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis on May 25, the report added.