Max Vernon (police officer)

Chief Superintendent Maxwell Stamp Vernon (7 January 1936 – 13 February 2021) was a British police officer and hostage negotiator. Vernon joined the Metropolitan Police after serving as a military policeman during his National Service. He was involved in the successful negotiations to end the 1975 Balcombe Street siege and afterwards served with the Metropolitan Police's fraud squad. In 1980, as a chief inspector, Vernon led the six-man negotiating team during the Iranian Embassy siege. He thought he was close to resolving the siege peacefully when a hostage, who Vernon thought was intentionally provoking his captors, was shot dead. This led to a Special Air Service (SAS) assault on the building which killed or captured the gunmen and freed all bar one of the hostages (who was shot and killed during the assault). Vernon continued to negotiate until the last moment as a distraction technique and was later commended for this by a member of the SAS team.

Vernon returned to his fraud squad role after the assault, but suffered from depression for many months, feeling that he had failed in his negotiations. He ran the Metropolitan Police's negotiation training course from 1983 to 1986 and incorporated lessons learnt during the siege into his teaching. Vernon later served as divisional commander at Woolwich and retired in the rank of chief superintendent. In 2017 he was portrayed by actor Mark Strong in 6 Days, a film dramatization of the siege. Vernon died of pneumonia in 2021 following a COVID-19 infection.