The St. Joseph County Drug Investigation Unit will be no more as of January 1st 2020.

The announcement came yesterday from St. Joseph County Prosecutor Ken Cotter as he says there is a need to focus resources to other areas, like violent crimes, which have seen an increase county wide.

The unit started in 2016 and statistically was successful in reducing the overall number of overdoses. This year there have been 12 confirmed overdose deaths compared to 58 in 2016 when the group started.

Cotter said that this does not mean that drug cases will not still be investigated; they will just be done by individual departments. There are 8 officers that make up the DIU, all of which will now return to their original departments to for their assignment.