Reports: NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is going to resign

Bratton will be replaced by the current Chief of Department James O’Neill, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed city officials.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is scheduled to announce the move at a joint news conference with Bratton at noon, according to the Journal.

Bratton will reportedly remain in his post until September — as his replacement transitions into the job — before he returns to the private sector.

 The news comes just a week after Bratton gave an interview to the New York Times declaring he would not remain in the post past 2017.

Bratton was named commissioner by de Blasio, and is one of the most significant appointments de Blasio has made since taking office in 2014. Bratton had previously held the role of commissioner in 1994 under the Giuliani administration.

Bratton’s tenure has received considerable criticism, even as New York City's crime rate continues its overall downward trend. Police officials announced at the beginning of the year that major crime in 2015 reached a historically low point, with a 5.8% drop in the two years since de Blasio and Bratton took office. The city also reported a 93% drop in the notorious stop-and-frisk encounters that had reached a pinnacle during the term of the previous police commissioner, Raymond Kelly.

The national debate about racial profiling and excessive use of force in policing has followed Bratton throughout his two-and-a-half years as commissioner, as ongoing racial tensions between the police department and the city's communities of color have persisted.

On Monday, activists from the group Millions March NYC occupied Manhattan’s City Hall Park to protest police brutality and demand that de Blasio fire Bratton, provide NYPD-funded reparations to survivors and victims of police brutality, and redirect the police department’s funding into black and brown communities.