The Nov. 30 death of Nathaniel Jones after a violent struggle with Cincinnati Police revealed that several make-or-break reforms from the 2002 Collaborative Agreements on Police Community Relations still are lagging.

The new citizen-run watchdog agency, Citizen Complaint Authority, may be months away from operating at full complement, police are even farther from mobilizing a computerized "risk management system" to track officers' use-of-force incidents, and city officials are still in search of non-lethal means for police to subdue mentally ill or drug-disturbed suspects. Mayor Charlie Luken called Sunday for spending $1 million on newer Taser stun guns for every officer. That's a good first step, but the mayor, City Manager Valerie Lemmie, council and community leaders should be pushing harder for faster reform across a broad front.

The Jones case, involving six officers, will test the Citizen Complaint Authority as never before, yet the agency is still short a full-time director and a fifth investigator. The authority gets 40 complaints a month, and must issue findings for most complaints within 90 days.

The authority has a hard-working seven-citizen board and an able part-time interim director, Daniel Baker, a former Dayton police lieutenant. But how you start is how you end, and the complaint authority's start has been fitful. Its first director, Nathanael Ford, was hired after a lengthy search, but abruptly retired in June.

To its credit, the authority has deftly reviewed difficult cases such as the Feb. 8 fatal shooting of 34-year-old burglary suspect Andre Sherrer in Northside. In June, it cleared Officer Michael Schulte of any wrongdoing. But the city manager needs to swiftly put a full-time director in place to stabilize the agency, and let the board get on with setting reasonable precedents as to its jurisdiction and which cases require in-depth review. The Collaborative does allow for some complaints to be resolved through the Citizen Complaint Review Process within the police department.

The mayor and manager ought to find the funds, with help from private sources if necessary, to bring a computerized risk management system online. That database can help flag officers with an excessive force problem or citizens with a history of making false complaints.

In the Jones case, police were unable to dispatch, in time to help, any of 90 officers specially trained to handle disturbed suspects. The six on-scene officers were not equipped with Tasers, and even if they were, that might not have saved Jones. Lemmie told the Enquirer Editorial Board she would investigate if more officers need to be trained to deal with disturbed suspects and if police use-of-force policy should be adjusted when many officers respond to the scene. More training is needed.

The Collaborative recommended these reforms more than a year ago. Luken, Lemmie and council need to implement them now, before another city-rending tragedy occurs.