Hartford (AP) _ Reuben F. Bradford, the commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, will retire Feb. 1 after three years of overseeing state police and other law enforcement operations amid criticism from the state police union over management decisions.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Bradford’s retirement Thursday. No reason was given for why Bradford decided to retire. Malloy said work on finding a successor to Bradford has begun.

“Commissioner Bradford did an exceptional job of leading the state’s first responders through a period where they were tested time and time again,” Malloy said in a statement.

The governor praised Bradford for his work in the aftermath of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last year, when 20 first-graders and six adults were killed. He also commended Bradford for leading the agency through Superstorm Sandy and other severe storms.

Malloy credited Bradford for restoring the state crime lab’s national accreditation and nearly eliminating backlogs at the lab, and overseeing an expansion of the former Department of Public Safety to include homeland security and other operations designed to increase efficiency.

Bradford was tapped in late 2010 by then-Gov.-elect Malloy to be commissioner and began the job in early 2011 after leading security efforts in the National Football League for 15 years. Before the NFL, he had a 22-year career in the Connecticut state police.

“Working at the department has presented many challenges, but the underlying work ethic of the people who make up this critically important agency made the task at hand worthwhile,” Bradford said in a statement. “While we have accomplished much, there is much more to be done.”

The state police union has been criticizing Bradford over the consolidation of state police dispatch operations. Last year, union members overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Bradford, saying management decisions were jeopardizing the safety of troopers and the public.

Malloy and Bradford denied the union’s allegations. They said the dispatch center consolidations would save money and free up more than 50 troopers to return to patrols.

The police union president, Sgt. Andrew Matthews, has said the consolidations have resulted in some 911 calls going unanswered and some barracks being closed at times after having been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Last year, state police consolidated the dispatch centers of barracks in Litchfield, Southbury and Canaan in northwestern Connecticut into one center in Litchfield. A similar consolidation has been made for barracks in Danielson, Colchester, Montville and Tolland, placing all dispatching for eastern Connecticut in Troop C in Tolland.

Before the consolidations, each barracks had a dispatch center manned by at least one dispatcher and trooper around the clock. Because some barracks are now closed sometimes during nights and weekends, troopers have to drive longer distances to other barracks that are open to drop off people they arrest, which reduces patrol and response times, Matthews said.

The union also sued Bradford and the department in 2011 over what the union claims were inadequate staffing levels that threatened public and trooper safety. The state attorney general’s office fought the allegations and filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court after a lower court declined to dismiss the lawsuit.

In September, the attorney general’s office dropped the appeal, citing a new law that eliminated a state police staffing minimum.

“We wish him well in his retirement,” Matthews said Thursday about Bradford. “And we look forward to working with the next commissioner and ensuring the safety of the citizens and the troopers are a priority.”