Newsnight has investigated the police response to what was recorded as an extremely violent race hate incident.

One of the most serious categories of crime.

What?

I was in that corner.

I was covering my head like this.

I was thinking my son is not gonna have a month on.

I'm gonna be dead.

We can reveal The police investigation was halfhearted on disastrously slow.

One very senior former police officer told me it was negligent on so far.

Theater hackers have evaded justice near Farah, grew up in Cardiff but has lived in London for the past 13 years.

She works with the charity that helps ex prisoners.

She loves to run in her spare time.

On the 21st of December last year, she was out with two friends.

It was getting late, so nears.

Friends decided to stay the night at her flat in Kilburn ALS three women are of Somali descent.

They decided to go to this 24 hour convenience store for some snacks to take home one of Ned's friends in Swedish.

I was talking to a friend on the phone in Swedish.

We've agreed to protect her identity, so we'll call her Iman.

There was two girls in the shop and I was talking to my friend in Swedish and the girl said, Talk English.

I wasn't thinking anything of it, but she was standing before us in in the Q.

And she's starting making comments.

I remember there was 22 girls on Dwan of them said to my friend, This is F in England.

Speak F in English.

Iman left the shop, leaving her two friends inside.

One of the girls came out and punched me in my face.

She punched in the face as Net went to help her friend, she heard shouts from the other side of the road.

She says a group of seven white men had emerged from a park fan on.

We're approaching.

Niet wanted to show me what happened next from the safety of my car.

When they crossed the road and they got out of the van, I was punched side of my head there, so they punch me and I fell on the floor right where the vegetables were on then I'm just trying to catch my breath.

And then my friend was on the floor there in front of me and she was being beat up.

So I got up, try to comfort her, and then they dragged me into the doorway.

It's incredibly raw.

Fee.

Obviously, I think we should probably drive off.

Need says.

The van was dark colored with sliding door on the side on the man leading.

The other six had bald.

His fist on was shouting racist abuse of her.

He's just like he had this fist like this, like, and he was like, Yeah, and I remember I just just took my arm off my friend and I was just like what?

And then the other one came the one that was very smartly dressed.

He was behind him and then he punched me there.

Andi, I remember I fell on the floor.

ALS.

Three women that were being punched, neared was kicked unconscious ALS.

Seven of them was around us, and then I remember the one with that was smartly dressed with a black jacket.

He pulled me toe a doorway that was the doorway.

Next, the shop with it next to the shop?

Yeah, he pulled me in the doorway, and then he was stamping on me.

And then I was doing this, and then you were on the floor.

I was on the floor in that doorway on.

All I did was I was like, at that point, I thought, I'm dead.

I'm gonna be dead.

And then I did this and then I can see through, like, here and there that I was being kicked.

I remember there was four different types of shoes, because when they were kicking me, I could see the shoes that were hitting me.

And then one of them held the railing on.

I was, like, being stamped on.

And then there was kicks coming every angle of my body.

And I was just killed up on the floor like that.

I remember one of them came to kick me further on.

He was saying all there.

No, these are not these air.

No, these air, So Yeah.

Thus, um, those were the words that I clearly remember.

Yeah, the only thing I could see when I stood up.

What?

Her eyes was rolling.

That So you saw her eyes rolled back in your head and she was being dragged into the doorway of a shot and still being kicked when they dragged her to that place.

The drag from one place, The next place you still kick her.

What did you think about that?

Did you were going to die?

I was punched side of my head there.

Bob Quick has 32 years experience of dealing with violent crime.

He was head of specialist operations at the Met before that Chief Constable of Surrey Police and then my friend was on the floor there.

This was an attack of extreme violence.

This is indicative of people who are a public menace on need to be identified and brought to justice.

Uninterested int of this nature could quite legitimately have been described a critical incident.

It had potential to really impact on community confidence.

It was a serious crime in its own right.

And it was compound compounded by racial motivation, the evidence of which is clear.

I remember that I looked in the mirror in my bathroom.

There was a lot blood pouring down my face.

I had it all over my coat.

My hands were all full of blood and then I was.

Look, I was doing this to my head on.

I remember I as I was doing that, I put my finger in the hole and this is my finger About that much went into my head.

Andi.

Um And then I realized that I had to hold in my head.

Her friends had called 9992 constables responded to the call after 40 minutes waiting for an ambulance.

Nia says she persuaded the policemen to take her to hospital needs.

Head wound was sealed and she had a scan was put on opioid pain relief on.

Then I woke up on there was two police officers next to me and my two friends.

She says one of the officers starts to question her about what had happened was you buy in anything off them and I was like, No, he implying that you were trying to buy drugs.

He was literally just implying that we knew the guys.

Um, we were buying stuff off them, um, that it was almost impossible for the racist attack that happened in that area on it.

It was the repetition off the questions.

It was I felt like I was being interrogated by their account.

That does imply the officers seen.

We're working on some sort of assumption that they either knew the perpetrators or were in some way engaging with them, maybe buying drugs or whatever.

If that's true, then that's inexcusable.

The police absolutely have a duty to be objective on not to jump to conclusions.

So did racist assumptions undermine the police investigation?

The women say they did.

The Met denies the claim.

We can't be sure if wrong assumptions hampered the investigation.

But what we do know is that it was fatally floored by a Siris of basic mistakes.

After this, the response seems to have been pretty woeful.

You would have expected this to be prioritized immediately by the senior officer on duty and for um, standard operating procedures to apply on.

That would mean officers at the scene freezing the scene so that a scene management exercise can be undertaken for searching for any forensic clues.

Who knows what may have been dropped by a suspect for a widow?

One of the suspects may have had an injury and left blood at the scene.

It's essential to act fast in a criminal investigation to preserve evidence.

Thistle is known as the Golden hour.

It's a very busy high street.

There would have bean lots of opportunities to recover CCTV imagery, which may have identified some of the perpetrators or the vehicle that was described by the witnesses and the victims that the suspects made off on.

So there were lots of opportunities, really, to solve this crime.

It's not clear to me that they were taken on the 13th of January.

I came here down Kilburn Lane looking for CCTV.

Evidence is what the police should have been doing before Christmas.

I found this camera here attached the greengrocer shop overlooking the attack location.

Now, if the police had come before Christmas, they could have got a vital evidence because this camera might have caught the men crossing road attacking the three women.

No effort was made to recover CCTV from neighboring shops until the New year on.

By then, the footage had been recycled over, written by new material on.

It's unclear if there was any investigation into whether there were links between the original two women on the men in the van, and the van itself was not traced near, says she had to chase the police to make a statement after one officer told her it would not be necessary.

He said to me, Oh, we have no evidence, no CCTV camera, Absolutely, Like no line of inquiry.

So therefore, we can't take no statements off you.

Um, so basically, there's nothing that we can do for you at all.

That is extraordinary, though, because the statements from you and your friends, that would have been crucial evidence.

Yeah, absolutely.

After he had insisted, the police did take a statement.

But not until two months after the attack.

No statements have ever been taken from her Two friends to PCs who'd first attended the crime scene.

Said they passed the case over to Westminster C I.

D.

In December, and it was C I.

D.

That decided not to pursue it.

They said we left it for them when we went off for Christmas on.

They've left us details to basically say it wasn't gonna be a C.

I.

D.

Case because my injuries weren't severe enough, so they passed it back to us.

So I said to him So I asked him a question.

I said, So what injuries do I need to sustain for for it to be taken seriously, I said, Do I have to be dead?

We asked the Metropolitan Police about the women's allegation that they've bean racially profiled as black women on a night out buying drugs.

The Met told us this line of questioning should not be considered as an officer making any assumptions or doubting the account given by a victim.

We refute any suggestion that this is what happened in this case.

Our officers, always keeping open mind as to the circumstances of any attack on, must build an understanding of the facts from a very early stage.

This was treated as a serious, racially aggravated assault committed by people unknown to the victims.

We also put our questions about missed opportunities to the Met In a next ROrdonez readmission.

A spokesman told us that the attack could have qualified as a critical instant on the stakes were made.

We accept that this particular incident should have been escalated and prioritized at an earlier stage.

There was a delay in the necessary follow up enquiries being made just after the incident on this hindered the subsequent investigation.

This shouldn't have happened and We are sorry for letting the victims in this case down.

This was an appalling attack which should have been investigated with greater urgency for near the last 10 months.

Have bean deeply traumatic and she still can't bear to return home.

For now, it seems her racist Attackers have got away with it.

I have zero trust in the police now.

And they didn't help me when I was most in need.

I've had to live with the trauma of not knowing that I'm never gonna get justice because of their incompetence on them.

Just not taken my case serious.

The perpetrators of this crime clearly represent a danger to the public if they're prepared to use that type of violence and if they are particularly motivated by race.

So I would have expected significant resources to be allocated to this investigation on for a determined search on determined pursuit of ALS.

The available leads in response to news sites investigation.

The Metropolitan Police admitted it failed Naiad and her two friends three cases being reopened with a senior detective in charge.

But the police now say mistakes and delays were so serious there's no guarantee of justice on 10 months on from the attack.