Despite Vindication, Pain Lingers : Court: Record damages won in suit against Sheriff’s Department will not erase memories of arrests and beatings, Dole family members say.

After six years of trials, charges and countercharges, the Dole family has won vindication and record-breaking damages from Los Angeles County. But as they sat in their attorney’s office Tuesday discussing their case, there was little sense of closure or celebration.

Instead, there were tears and difficult memories.

“It will never be over for our family,” lamented Clementine Dole. “The money is nothing. . . . People don’t know what we went through.”

Monday, to compensate them for their ordeal, a civil court jury ordered the financially pressed county to pay the Doles and more than two dozen friends and relatives a total of $15.9 million in damages, the largest judgment ever brought against the county Sheriff’s Department.

The jury, which is to return today to consider two final phases of the trial, made the award after concluding that sheriff’s deputies had beaten the Doles and their guests and had made false arrests when deputies stormed a Samoan American party at the Doles’ Cerritos home in 1989. The Sheriff’s Department, calling the damages “grossly excessive,” is planning an appeal.

The family patriarch, Arthur Dole, a retired electrician who was awarded $1 million, still shrugs his shoulders in puzzlement, unable to understand why his ribs were broken in his own home, why his children were beaten and bloodied, shoved and handcuffed.

“No reason. Why?” wondered Dole.

The party had started as an afternoon bridal shower for one of Dole’s five daughters, Melinda, who was getting married the next month. It was also the first large family gathering since Matasaua, Dole’s wife and the children’s mother, had died and thus carried added significance.

By evening, more than 35 people had arrived at the house in a quiet residential neighborhood. The Dole children, all grown, played some of their mother’s tapes of Polynesian music and then switched to Top 40 tunes.

Responding to a neighbor’s complaint, a few sheriff’s deputies pulled up to the house and politely asked them to turn down the music. They did. A deputy returned about 20 minutes later, and as the Doles recall, declared all peaceful.

It didn’t remain so. Saying they received calls that people were fighting in the street with sticks and knives, scores of sheriff’s deputies descended on the scene as a department helicopter hovered above.

When the Doles--who deny there was ever any fighting--asked what was going on, they say they were greeted with obscenities. David Dole’s response was to call 911. The dispatcher told him to go out and talk to a supervising deputy. When he went back outside, Dole recalled, “They just jumped me.”

What ensued, according to the party-goers and neighbors who watched the scene--and in one instance videotaped it--was a melee in which riot gear-clad deputies swarmed into the house and dragged out unresisting men and women, clubbing, kicking and swearing at them, even when they were lying handcuffed on the ground.

Deputies, who contended the party-goers hurled bottles and rocks at them, arrested 34 people. But charges were quickly dropped against most of them. And three years ago, a jury acquitted David Dole and two others of charges that they had rioted and assaulted the deputies.

David Dole, one of Arthur’s two sons, was awarded nearly $3.9 million, the most of any of the plaintiffs. He still winces when he talks about the charges filed against him.

“There was no way I’d spend one day in jail for doing nothing,” said Dole, who suffered a broken hand and head injuries that his doctor says have resulted in some brain atrophy.

He said he became so depressed at the possibility of imprisonment that he entertained thoughts of suicide: It would have been better for his child to visit his grave than to see him in prison.

But even when the charges were behind them, the Doles say, they were unable to shake the ghosts of that night. Emily Dole, a professional wrestler known as Mt. Fiji and one of David’s sisters, has been hospitalized for depression numerous times since 1989. David Dole says he has memory problems and, as a result, has experienced work difficulties.

Melinda Dole Paopao feels haunted by feelings of guilt--that she had somehow been responsible for that night because it was her bridal shower.

Immediately after the incident, when county law enforcement officials defended the deputies, even relatives and friends questioned the Doles, wondering what they had done to deserve the beatings.

“If that neighbor hadn’t videotaped what happened, who would have believed us,” asked Eddie Agae, a cousin of the Doles and one of the plaintiffs who will share in the award.

For a long time, he said, he did not feel comfortable going to house parties.

Even now, Sheron Dole said, she alerts her landlord when she has family members over to her apartment.

In light of the expected appeals, the Doles’ attorney, Garo Mardirossian, predicted it will be two years before the case is over.

With the $15.9-million verdict in and the jury returning today to decide if the Sheriff’s Department has allowed incidents of brutality to occur and if the individual deputies should be assessed punitive damages, Mardirossian said his clients would be happy with $1--along with a written apology--from each deputy.

“Maybe from this, they’ll learn,” said Sheron Dole.