On July 21, Stone County (Mo.) Sheriff Doug Rader announced he was putting "In God We Trust" bumper stickers  all patrol vehicles "This became our National Motto in 1956 and is on all of our currency. There has been no better time than now to proudly display our National Motto," Rader posted on Facebook.

No one seems to know exactly how it started, or who was even the first to do it, but several sheriff’s departments in small communities around the country began to place decals on their cruisers featuring the slogan “In God We Trust” sometime in late July.

Some departments and law enforcement officers have remained silent about their endorsement of the decals, except for a few social media posts. Others, such as Sheriff Keith Cooper out of Greenup County, Kentucky, have chosen to speak out about why the phrase and its sentiment are so important to him.

“The way we work, my guys, we don’t ride two to a car,” Cooper said. “It’s over 350 square miles. We work by ourselves. If I can’t have a partner, I’d rather have God in the car with me as anybody else. I just think it’s appropriate and it’s right. I didn’t do it to make anybody mad. I just did it because it sounded good to me.”

Critics argue that the decals promote specific religious beliefs. 

According to the Cumberland, Maryland, Times-News, all 17 of the Mineral County sheriff’s office cruisers now display “In God We Trust” decals.

“This is our national motto and is the grounds on what our country was founded,” said Sheriff Jeremy Taylor. “Everyone is trying to take God out of everything and I feel it is something that everyone needs more of. The deputies and I put our trust in God every day to keep us safe and bring us home to our families and loved ones, which is one of the reasons this prompted us to put the decals on the cruisers.”

According to the U.S. Department of Treasury, the motto “In God We Trust” was placed on United States coins and bills largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War. Secretary of the Treasury at the time Salmon P. Chase also received appeals from devout persons throughout the country, urging that the United States recognize the deity on United States currency.

However, after court and political battles concerning the separation of church and state, the motto began to disappear from public consciousness.

But in 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives drafted H. Con. Res. 13 which states ‘In God We Trust’ is now the official motto of the United States.

So when Cooper heard of a fellow sheriff making the move of putting the decals on his department’s patrol cars, it shocked him that it hadn’t been done before.

“To be honest it had never occurred to me until shortly before we actually put them on there,” Cooper said. “There was a television on in my office for some reason. I was walking by it and I saw they were interviewing a sheriff (Doug Rader) from Missouri, I think Stone County. I stopped and saw what was going on and one of my deputies (Larry Pancake) and I looked at each and thought why didn’t we think to do that. Seems like a good idea to me. Larry said, ‘I know where I can get those.’ He ordered them and when they came in we started putting them on the cruisers.”

But before Cooper could actually put the idea into action, he had to check out the legality of it.

“Before I actually bought them, I checked with my county attorney to make sure because it had the name God in it and how people kind of are,” Cooper said. “They referred to a Supreme Court case from 1970 where the court said they didn’t interpret it as being a statement of faith. It was a slogan basically.

For me, however, it is a statement of faith because I believe very deeply in God.”

The exact number of law enforcement departments that have taken up the decals is not known. But the trend does seem to be spreading. 

Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen told the Washington Post that he got the idea from an email.

“It’s just right now it seems like in our country law enforcement has been painted with a brush that we’re bad guys,” McKeithen told the Post. “So I was trying to think of something that might set a fire to our guys. We want to be proud and we want people to be proud of us, and we know we’re better than how people portray us.”