Max Vernon (police officer)

Vernon ran the Metropolitan Police's negotiation course from 1983 to 1986. He used his experience of the siege in his teaching, noting that "there has been nothing like it before or since. We learned while we were working on it and people are still learning from what we did, right and wrong". Vernon rose to the rank of chief superintendent and retired from the police as divisional commander of Woolwich. He was portrayed by Mark Strong in 6 Days, the 2017 film based on the siege. During filming, Vernon met Strong and told him "you've been wrongly cast. You're two inches shorter than me and I have more hair". Vernon died of pneumonia on 13 February 2021, following a COVID-19 infection.

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.

By 1980 Vernon was a chief inspector with the Metropolitan Police fraud squad. Because he had attended the negotiation course, Vernon was summoned to the scene of the Iranian Embassy siege on its first day, 30 April. He was not aware of the nature of the incident until he arrived on the scene. Vernon led a team of six negotiators that worked around the clock from a room in a building near the embassy. After external communications were cut off the negotiators spoke with the hostage takers by means of a field telephone passed through a window of the embassy. The gunmen initially held 26 hostages.

In 1975 Vernon helped negotiate the end of the Balcombe Street siege in which four IRA gunmen held a couple hostage in a flat in Marylebone; the hostages were released and the IRA men arrested. Vernon was afterwards selected to receive hostage negotiation training, at a time when it was not a widely recognised skill.

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 was born on 7 January 1936, the eldest of five children of a junior school headmaster. He grew up in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. Vernon carried out his compulsory National Service as a military policeman at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, in Mons, Belgium. Upon leaving the military he joined the Metropolitan Police as a cadet. Vernon was married to Betty with whom he had three daughters. His wife died when the children were still young and Vernon afterwards remarried, to Lucy. In his spare time he was a clay pigeon shooter and model railway enthusiast. Vernon was also an amateur historian with a particular interest in the Battle of Waterloo.