Testing bulletproof vest, Washington, DC., 1923

Last summer Officer Rodney Lewis was shot during a scuffle while responding to a domestic violence dispute in Ridgewood. As Lewis and his partner struggled to arrest a suspect, an antique .32-caliber long revolver dropped out of the man's waistband and discharged one round into Lewis's left side, striking him in an area not protected by his bullet proof vest. Lewis believes that had he been given the new and improved bullet proof vest the city promised, the bullet would have been thwarted. And now he's suing.

After Officer Dillon Stewart was killed in 2005 after being shot under his arm where there was a gap between his vest's protective panels, Mayor Bloomberg promised to give new vests to all cops. But like many other officers, Lewis never got one. "He was one of several guys at his precinct who never got called down [to be measured for a new vest]," his lawyer Matthew Sakkas tells the Post. "He was waiting and wondering, ‘What’s gong on?' "

Lewis went back to work two months after the shooting, but he has yet to receive one of the coveted new bulletproof vests—but that may have something to do with his being sidelined from another, unrelated accident, the Daily News reports.