Photo courtesy Springfield Police Department

Springfield’s police chief says he’s unable to directly connect an announcement of 20 people charged with selling heroin and fentanyl to the recent spike in deadly overdoses in the city.

Paul Williams says drug investigations are complicated and take time, and the drug trade is not restricted geographically.

Williams won’t comment on whether more drug dealers will be arrested in the near future as part of the ongoing federal investigation.

The chief says it took a number of agencies working together, including Springfield Police, the Greene County Sheriff’s Office, Missouri State Highway Patrol, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, for federal prosecutors to charge those people.

More than a dozen of those charged are behind bars.