New York City police commissioner William Bratton to resign Tuesday

New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton on Tuesday will announce his resignation as the head of the largest city police force in the United States, according to several media reports.

Mayor Bill de Blasio scheduled a news conference for noon at City Hall to make "an NYPD-related announcement." Representatives for the Police Department and for the mayor's office would not confirm that Bratton was set to step down.

Regarded as a celebrity in the world of law enforcement, Bratton, 68, was credited with sharply cutting crime in New York City and gaining the moniker "supercop" as police commissioner before leaving to work in the private sector.

De Blasio brought Bratton back to take over the department in 2014, 18 years after he first held the position under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Bratton, who started his career as an officer in Boston in 1970, has also overseen the police departments in Boston and Los Angeles.

He is known as a strong supporter of the "broken windows" theory, which holds that preventing minor infractions such as vandalism and public drinking can help lower the number of more serious crimes.

In New York, Bratton applied the theory by cracking down on petty crimes. Supporters have credited his policing strategy with helping to contribute to the city's drastic reductions in crime since the 1990s, while critics have assailed the tactics as heavy-handed.

In his first turn as police commissioner, Bratton introduced the CompStat system of tracking crime statistics in real time, which has since been adopted by numerous police departments as a crime-fighting tool.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)