Update: The Coral Springs Police Department says the fight took place August 22 at a La Quinta Inn on University Drive near Sample Road. Officers arrested the woman in the teal dress, identified as Summer Cortts, a 39-year-old Boca Raton resident, and charged her with disorderly conduct and inciting an affray because she "escalated the situation by placing her hands on Colleen Dagg."
Some people respond to public displays of racism by keeping their mouths shut, looking down, and pretending like nothing happened. Others casually join in the bigotry.
Another group chimes in, tells a racist to knock it off, gets hit in retaliation, and then whoops somebody's ass in self-defense.
As a viral video making the rounds on the internet seems to show, Miami-area woman Colleen Dagg belongs in that latter group. The clip begins midway through Dagg's altercation with a woman in a teal dress. New Times confirmed with one of Dagg's friends and local police yesterday that the video was shot in a building in Coral Springs.
Dagg said online that before the video recording began, the teal-dressed woman was saying a bunch of offensive nonsense to a black Haitian security guard. Dagg told her to pipe down.
Then, as the clip shows, Dagg takes off her shoes in the building's lobby while the teal-dressed woman taunts her.
"Why are you taking your shoes off?" the woman asks. "You gonna hit me with one of your shoes? I'm gonna fucking shoot you in your fucking face."
A security guard tells both women to leave.
"I'm taking my shoes off so that if she puts her hands on me, I can defend myself," Dagg responds.
Then the teal-dressed lady gets in Dagg's face and shoves her. In response, Dagg beats the living hell out of her, taunting her for being a racist
"You put your fucking hands on me?!" Dagg shouts as she beats the absolute paint off the woman who provoked the fight. "You say some racist-ass shit, and then you fucking [unintelligible] on me?"
After security guards break up the fight, the teal-dressed woman begins yelling that she's three months
Coral Springs Police spokesperson Ernesto Bruna confirmed to New Times that the cop in the video works for his department.
"That is one of our officers at the end," Bruna told New Times via phone. He could not immediately confirm if any arrests were made. (Bruna said he's "interested to find out what happened himself.")
It appears Dagg, who did not have a Twitter account before the fight happened, created one to release a statement about the skirmish. (She lists her hometown as "Miami, Florida" online.) Her comments are a pretty pitch-perfect example of how to react when you see some racist stuff go down:
— Colleen Dagg (@DaggDagg94) August 23, 2017Stay ready, indeed.
Update 1 p.m.: According to Coral Springs PD, the fight happened around 8 p.m. Tuesday at the La Quinta Inn at 3701 University Dr. The report doesn't shed any light on the origins of the fight or Dagg's claims that Cortts had made racist comments, but police did find the two women brawling in the lobby of the hotel. Officers interviewed witnesses and decided that Summer Cortts was at fault for "placing her hands on Colleen Dagg as she was sitting down in the chair."
Although Dagg declined to pursue battery charges, Coral Springs Police say they arrested Cortts on the more minor charges because she "disrupted the peace in a public place." Cortts was also barred from returning to the La Quinta. Court records don't show any previous charges for Cortts in Palm Beach or Broward County; it's unclear if she has an attorney yet.
