June 2-8, 2005

cover story

"Make no mistake about it: I was going to kill someone."

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Race, drugs and retibution at a local military base.

by Brian Hickey

In about two hours, the sun will rise on the day Joel Hobson reaches his breaking point. He walks out the front door of his North Philadelphia row home and places two 9 mm handguns and a .38 under the seat of his old minivan. He drives south toward Dover Air Force Base, where, for the past 11 years, he's served America as a reservist. Things haven't been going that well lately; Hobson is mentally cataloguing the problems.

The recipient of an "absolutely superior in all areas" performance review seven months earlier, he is no longer respected as a serviceman who traveled the world ferrying troops and military equipment to overseas hotspots, including the scorching Middle East. Restricted to stateside duty because of severe periodontal disease, he's spent the past year on the team that flies President Bush's limousines to wherever "the big guy needs them." (He says that sitting inside Bush's ride is an "overrated" experience.)

It's around 0600 hours, 09 Feb 04. Hobson is under the impression that his superiors think he's faking ailments to avoid going to Iraq, that he's too scared to go where the action is. In recent months, they've written him up for everything from back-talking superiors to forgetting to shave. He is fed up with the harassment, much of which was brought on by intensely questioning authority. He thinks it has to do with the fact that he's black, and the majority of his peers, and superiors, are white.

All weekend, his phone hadn't stopped ringing. His bosses had been calling to find out when he'd return to base. He told them he was on leave while recovering from a Fairmount Park car accident and tending to his ailing wife Mary, who, if she doesn't get a kidney transplant stat, will soon die. They tell him it's not an authorized leave, that he must return to Dover immediately.

FAMILY TIES: Allegations of drug use particularly hurt Hobson, considering his mother Jean (center) was among the first in North Philly to rally neighborhood support and try to reclaim the streets from drug dealers. Joel (fourth from left) was her only son, but she'd raise at least six other children.

So Hobson, a 37-year-old with deep Philadelphia roots, steers his car south on I-95 and crosses into Delaware. They want me back? Oh, I'll come back alright, he thinks. He gets onto Route 1 and approaches the military installation that houses the massive morgue where a nation's dead soldiers return to America. It's where Hobson and the rest of the 709th Airlift Squadron are based.

The guns under his seat are loaded. Hobson is prepared to use them.

"My plan was to find somebody I had a problem with, follow them to a secluded area and take them out," he says. "I'd had enough. Make no mistake about it: I was on the verge of killing someone."

He's closer to the base now, and the thoughts swirl faster. He stops on a bridge in the shadows of the base and puts his hazard lights on. Before long, vengeance gives way to recollections of the news stories about an American soldier in Kuwait who threw a grenade into a tent, killing an Army man. Personal grudges dissipate when he envisions the planes flying into the World Trade Center.

Hobson, in his military uniform, sits on that bridge for 45 minutes. He'll later tell a counselor that he put one of the guns in his mouth but didn't pull the trigger. The past, present and future tear him in different directions. The future wins.

"I got to thinking about my family, and what would happen if I did it. I'd have ended up on death row, never able to see my family again," Hobson explains with little hint of emotion. "I didn't want to go down in history as a terrorist."

One by one, he takes the weapons from under the seat. And one by one, according to United States Air Force records, he throws them into the water below. So close to crossing a line from which he could never return, Hobson makes the sane choice amidst a sea of insane impulses.

No longer armed but for a hammer, he turns the minivan around and drives himself to Germantown Hospital. He tells the doctors and nurses that incessant, racially motivated hounding has rendered him mentally unstable. He says he's a danger to himself and others. He confides in them that he needs help. They admit him for observation and treatment.

Little do the soldiers at Dover know just how close they've come to witnessing a deadly attack on a stateside military base, carried out by one of their own. And little does Hobson know — as he's taken by ambulance from Germantown to a psychiatric facility in Norristown — that it's the last time he'll see the outside world for five months.

The hardest mission of Joel Hobson's life is about to begin.

Methamphetamines are a powerfully addictive stimulant. They offer an initial rush of energy, followed by a period of heightened alertness and hyperactivity. They're a favorite of, among other people, truck drivers who need to keep their eyes open on long hauls. Among meth's side effects are increased anger and hostility, as well as tooth and gum (or periodontal) problems. The drug can turn up in a person's blood or urine for up to three days after it's ingested.

About six hours after Hobson put Dover A.F.B. in his rearview mirror, he was given a drug test in Germantown. It came up negative. Seventeen hours later, after having spent the night under suicide watch in Norristown — he tried hanging himself with the cord of his pants — he took another test. This time, the part-time truck driver with anger-management issues and gum problems came up positive. Granted, there are a slew of medications that can account for a false positive result. All it takes is one too many squirts of a Vicks inhaler. Hobson, who makes no such excuses, can't explain why the test came up positive. But ask him the question several times over the course of several months, and he won't waver: "I have never used meth."

Hobson cops to smoking some weed as a teen, but he holds stubbornly to his claim that he never touched anything stronger. That matters little. Today, he remains focused on making the military publicly tell everybody he isn't the homicidal maniac he's been made out to be.

CALLS OF DUTY: When Hobson was restricted to stateside duty, he flew President Bush's limousines across the country. He was on that team until he was discharged from the reserves and banned from Dover Air Force Base.

He has good reason to be offended by the inference that he's a "meth-head." Hobson grew up on North 27th Street at the time when drug gangs ruled the surrounding neighborhoods. The drug problem isn't as bad here today as the muscular, intensely focused former boxer — he imitates Muhammad Ali on his answering machine and collects Ring magazines — sits in his dining room and pores through the stacks of papers on the table, explaining his situation. If he can't answer a question with the documents, he goes right over to the computer and prints out more evidence.

He was a teenager at Strawberry Mansion High when crack cocaine started flooding the streets. Far from the ideal child, Hobson fought a lot and got suspended from school a few times because of it. He was a little too gung-ho for his own good, he admits. The rebellious attitude was one thing, but had his mother caught him doing drugs, well, there'd have been more than hell to pay.

Jean Hobson earned enough respect in that pocket of North Philadelphia to be widely known as "Miss Jean." The founder of North Philadelphia Mothers Concerned, she'd walk neighborhood kids to school, shooing the pushers from their stoops along the way. She'd open her home to kids from broken families, like the infant she took in after authorities found him unattended at a crack house near Broad and Girard streets.

Joel would be her only birth son, but she'd raise at least six children. At times, the utilities got turned off so she could feed them all.

"During those gang-war days, I used to cry all the time," Hobson says, his intense glare softening as he thinks back. "My mom's going out in all this stuff. I thought she was going to die. It made me a little hostile, but as I got older, it took time, but I understood what she was doing and why."

It actually took quite some time. In 1998, a year after Jean Hobson's death, everybody from then-Police Commissioner John Timoney to then-Council President John Street traveled up to 25th and Berks streets to dedicate a mural painted in her memory. The message on the row house wall: "Put Down the Weapons, Pick Up the Books, Save Our Children." But as family, friends and admirers sang her praises, Joel was nowhere to be found.

"I hated having to share her attention," he admits seven years later. "That day, the mural, that was for everybody else, for all the other people who loved her, but not for me."

Still, Hobson says, he was raised not to use drugs and, except for the teenaged marijuana experimentation, he honored his mother by not doing so. That's why he lashes out at the military, which used those drug test results — and homicidal and suicidal admissions he made to psychiatric counselors following his day on the bridge — to formally file criminal charges.

"It's an insult to how I was raised. I don't do drugs. I've seen the effects they have on people and communities, people selling wives and daughters," he says. "She'd roll over in her grave if she heard all this stuff."

By year's end, Hobson will spend five months in a Navy brig in California, thousands of miles away from his military-appointed attorney, as his wife fought for her life. His path took him from his voluntary hospitalization in Germantown to two other medical facilities before the military initiated criminal proceedings against him. From his cell in southern California, he launched a letter-writing campaign, telling his tale to everybody from each justice of the Delaware Supreme Court to U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Ca.) and Sen. Arlen Specter.

In a longer letter to President Bush that culled no response, Hobson wrote, "My commanders, in my opinion, are spineless and despicable individuals abusing their authority. They are infuriated because I refuse to surrender to their wishes." Feinstein would inquire into the matter and receive a letter from the Air Force congressional-inquiry division stating that there was not a "preponderance of evidence" to support Hobson's discrimination claims.

"One of the Air Force's greatest strengths is the diversity of its people," says base spokeswoman Maj. Cheryl Law. "Because our people are so important to us, we have a "zero-tolerance' policy for discrimination and all complaints are investigated and dealt with swiftly to maintain a work environment that all members of our team can succeed in."

Medical records hint he concocted the claims to avoid prosecution, even though the claims were made long before he was arrested.

PATTERN CRIMES: Hobson's attorney doesn't think it'll be easy to prove that racism led ranking officers at Dover Air Force Base to target Hobson for removal from the military. Hobson, however, has a list of soldiers who he says represent a pattern of abuse. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Still, the Air Force would ultimately drop all the charges and remand Hobson to civilian life 171 days after he was locked up. To this day, he says they they haven't offered him an adequate explanation as to why he was suddenly no longer deemed dangerous despite all their evidence to the contrary. If he's as crazy as they say, shouldn't he have gotten a dishonorable discharge?

He's not satisfied. He wants answers, so he hired an attorney who represented a soldier implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal to help him get them.

"All I want is to clear my name," he says. "I want them to tell everybody I'm not a drug user. My mom taught me to tell it how it is. Well, that's what I'm doing now."

Joel Hobson's story is a mess of paperwork and conflicting perceptions. Hobson admits he made the threatening statements they charged him with and that he could live with facing those charges. But, he says he only lashed out because they continued nit-picking at him, a pattern he says he's seen happen to other black service members at Dover.

Today, he'll tell you he probably wouldn't have gone on that killing spree. (A friend says he has a penchant for talking tougher than he acts). But then again, he'll add, he was so far over the edge, his rage could have taken him anywhere. When he recounts the story, he gets visibly tense. He was under a lot of pressure at work and at home, where he supplemented his work as a truck driver by running Sarge's Cleaning and Janitorial Service on the side with his wife.

What's clear — thanks to the massive paper trail Hobson kept and the reams of documents the Air Force made available to City Paper once contacted about Hobson's claims — is this: Hobson was no longer welcome as a member of the military he turned to as a young man "for the discipline he needed." There's also no question that the military was scared of what he might do next.

The 143 pages of medical records the Air Force provided paint a disturbing picture. Things do seem to turn sour around the time he was restricted to stateside duty thanks to his dental issues in April 2003. It was a problem for two reasons: He couldn't collect hazard pay, and he'd be kept away from the action. After all, Hobson's the kind of guy who has a map of the world on his wall with a pin for every place he flew on a C-5 as a loadmaster. There are 73 in all: white for South Korea, Japan and Hawaii; green for Diego Garcia; orange for the top of Norway.

These papers show Hobson in a gradual decline. Early on, he's a model loadmaster who dreamed of serving 20 years (he served an additional six in the Marine Corps before joining the Air Force) and retiring as a chief master sergeant. By the time they lock him up, he's overrun by mistrust and prone to anger and paranoia. According to the records, he underwent a "dramatic change in behavior" after the gum diagnosis. Though he wasn't diagnosed as having any disorder that could explain it, his records indicate that he hears voices and hallucinates.

"The military says I have a personality disorder because I disagreed with them," he says. "They've been trying to make me look crazy all along. I'm not."

The inference is that banning him from the base — an order that remains in effect to this day — wasn't sufficient; he had to be jailed and moved far, far way, even if he was sane enough to have himself hospitalized.

One of Hobson's peers, who can't be named due to the fact that he's still actively serving, questions the military's version of events and backs Hobson's claims of innocence on the drug charges. He can see how they pushed Hobson to the edge.

"A lot of things that happen in the military aren't fair, and yeah, I guess I see how that can be perceived as racism. Certain people get breaks and certain people don't. If you're not in the clique, forget it," the serviceman said in a recent phone conversation. "I know he had nothing to do with drugs whatsoever. I don't think Joel did the things they say he did. Those were just things in his mind. You've had thoughts, too, and never acted on them, right? Everybody has. He's a good guy, a smart guy, even though sometimes his energy might be directed in the wrong direction."

Hobson spent just a couple days at Norristown, but while he was there his superior officers at Dover called the facility repeatedly. They wanted to know the reason for his hospitalization. They asked why he refused to the return to base for the psychological evaluation that had already been scheduled by superiors concerned about his fitness for service. Hobson knew his superiors wanted him mentally worked up, but since he didn't trust them, he chose to handle matters on his own. He knew the results could be given directly to his superior officers, that he had no expectation of privacy. He mentioned that he didn't think it was safe for him to be back on base, considering the dangerous thoughts running through his head. Hobson then told his civilian doctors not to give a reason.

He spoke more about the harassment, a theory for which he has a list of names of black servicemen and servicewomen passed over for advancement or rung up on charges that their white peers skated on. He cites four, by name, who were "forced from the squadron since August 1996." Air Force officials were unavailable to answer questions on Hobson's claims, but the medical documents hint that they think he made them up to avoid prosecution.

In a letter to his commanding officer, Lt. Col. David Wuest, written four days before he drove to Dover with the guns, Hobson wrote, "[A]ny individual with minimum intelligence can see what you are doing." Wuest would ultimately sign off on Hobson's arrest after noting in an internal military memo that he would be "dropping administrative action and likely pursuing mental health treatment."

But soon came the response that if Hobson didn't explain himself, military police officers (MPs) would arrive to take him into custody. Hobson says at that point, his doctor asked if he had anything to hide, specifically whether he'd used drugs. The doctor must have had a rudimentary knowledge of what Hobson was facing; the military code of justice states that having illicit drugs in one's system is an offense punishable by imprisonment. (That same week, a Dover Air Force captain/nurse got eight months following a positive reading for cocaine. It was impossible to discern, through press accounts of the case, whether she was white or black.) Hobson said he had nothing to hide, so the MPs showed up and took him to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C.

There, he was held on Ward 54, the psychiatric wing. According to Air Force documents, doctors and psychiatrists diagnosed him as having a major depressive order and a psychotic personality disorder. Hobson told the doctors that he often saw imaginary cats that warned him of danger. Today, he says it was a lie, that he was "being as honest as the people I was dealing with." But Air Force records indicate that when his wife and father were alerted of these visions, they said it wasn't anything to worry about, that Hobson was merely clairvoyant.

For nine days, he went through various forms of therapy, all of which hospital records state he performed well. His discharge papers say he wasn't psychotic, but that he should remain off active duty because "he is at risk for impulsive actions in the future."

Hobson's time at Walter Reed was up by Feb. 23, when four MPs arrived at Ward 54. Nurses escorted him to a lobby area where he was cuffed, shackled, placed in the back of a van and driven two hours back to Dover. There, he says, his captors walked him through the base gymnasium so his peers could see him. "They put me on display," he says, maintaining that the episode is further evidence of harassment. In fact, he was so worried that he'd taken to audio-taping conversations and writing down everything that happened, or he thought happened, to him. "I didn't know what these people were capable of," he says. "I thought they might put a bullet in the back of my head."

The military didn't believe him and formally charged him with using methamphetamines — based on the contradictory test results — and making terroristic threats. The latter charge came after they reviewed secondhand information from both military and civilian counseling sessions. Next thing Hobson knew, the cuffs and shackles were back on. He was placed on a commercial airliner, surrounded by two guards, for the long flight to the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, Ca.

The weeks and months leading up to Hobson's arrest and subsequent trip west were trying, and not just from a military standpoint. His wife, Mary Turner Hobson, was suffering from lupus and undergoing regular dialysis for end-stage kidney failure. She was weak and unable to care for herself. In December 2003, several months before Hobson's arrest, her fistula erupted and she bled out for the next 20 minutes.

"I had no heartbeat, code blue. I woke up on life support at St. Joseph's [hospital]," she recounts in their North 27th Street home. "It wasn't almost. I was dead. I had to come back from the dust."

Mary was still recovering from her near-death experience when Joel was taken into custody, the stress of balancing work and caring for his wife having seemingly overwhelmed him. While he was gone, Mary had to keep up with the cleaning contracts, traveling as far as Folcroft, alone and hurting, to maintain a stream of income.

"I was so sick I couldn't eat for two weeks. All I could do was crawl down the steps to get a glass of juice, get a drink," she says. "There was nobody there to take care of me. But all I wanted to do was keep those contracts until Joel got back."

As Mary took her case to the American Red Cross, which she'd hoped would put pressure on the Air Force to release her husband for her benefit, Hobson found himself in a dormitory style cellblock outside San Diego. He too, continued writing letters focusing mostly on the fact that his incarceration prevented him from consulting an attorney who could help him prepare for a potential court martial. (His assigned attorney was located in North Carolina, in the same general area where Hobson thought he should have been held, considering there was a similar facility in Norfolk, Va.)

By May, the military had dropped the drug charges, offering no explanation. Hobson would remain in custody for another three months, however, as the other charges stood. Hobson thinks they were sticking it to him; the Air Force seemed to think the additional charges were deserved. "I am mentally fit to stand trial and face my accusers. I am looking forward to seeing their faces when their lies are eclipsed by the light of truth!" read one letter to Air Force brass from the brig. "I would like to go on the record by saying that I feel my life is in danger. " Dr. [Martin Luther] King was a victim of this type of [cowardly] violence."

In discussing the case, Hobson's attorney Gary Myers, a Camp Hill native who attended Penn State and specializes in military cases, says the Air Force had no justification for holding his client as long as they did.

"There's no way to give him that time back," Myers says, contending that the extended period of pre-trial confinement likely violated Hobson's right to a speedy trial.

But as bad as it is to be locked up across the country from an ailing wife — Mary would lose their biggest cleaning contract 10 days before her husband's release; she didn't have the energy to keep it going any longer — Hobson's recollections of his time at Miramar make it clear that he was more comfortable there than he was in Dover. He connected with fellow inmates, mostly Navy men, who were in on charges ranging from nine months for sodomy, to lying and improper disposal of classified materials — one inmate had thrown a document in the trash rather than shredding it. There were also others incarcerated on drug charges.

"Even in my darkest moment," Hobson says, "I met some of the best men in the world."

Today, Hobson says he had no idea "the drug epidemic was as bad in the military as it was."

Though he'd later be described as a model prisoner, Hobson's stay there wasn't entirely incident-free. (While the military would drop the drug charges by May 20, 2004, the threats and an additional AWOL charge were kept on, meaning Hobson didn't need to be tried within 120 days of being locked up. He continued to receive his military pay for the duration.) He again found himself on the receiving end of a disciplinary report. This time, it seems, jail officials didn't much like the fact that the inmates were calling him "Sarge." Though it was Hobson's nickname, officials saw it as a sign that he was in a "leadership position" among the prisoners.

The resulting report alleges that Hobson didn't tell his peers to refrain from calling him Sarge, as he had been instructed to do. "I asked him if he understood and he proceeded to get smart and disrespectful saying, "I heard you," reads the charge.

Little did he know that the brightest moment of the entire roller-coaster ride was just around the corner. On the Fourth of July, several of the Navy men approached Hobson as he lay on his bunk writing what he hopes will become a book about his experience. They asked him to follow them to a commons area, where two dozen other inmates were waiting. Then they named him an honorary sailor, and gave him a Navy uniform shirt, complete with "Hobson" written in magic-marker.

"Man, the love and support I got there, I'll never forget it," Hobson says. He was so touched that he took the shirt and hid it in his cell so it wouldn't be confiscated by the guards, who, he claims, treated him well since they couldn't fathom why he was in their charge.

By Aug. 12, 2004, after having tried unsuccessfully to walk out of the brig with the memento, he was back on a plane for a cross-country flight. Saying only that the doctors now thought he "had a mental disease or defect at the time of the alleged criminal conduct," the Air Force advised him that all charges against him were no more. He was then given two pieces of paper. One was a record of his honorable discharge, which would be later downgraded to a general discharge. The second, dated four days later, is an indefinite Order Not to Re-enter Military Reservation. It reads, "You have engaged in conduct which is detrimental to good order and discipline while assigned to Dover Air Force Base."

Most people would have taken their freedom, honorable discharge and benefits and put it all behind. Joel Hobson isn't one of them.

Today, Myers admits that the Hobson case is quite a quagmire. Despite the weighty charges, and admissions, Myers thinks Hobson should have been given a military retirement which would have enabled him to receive more substantial benefits and compensation. He'll soon be taking that case to the Board of Correction of Military Records.

While Hobson has told him of the harassment, and the racial issues, Myers won't address them should his client choose to pursue them further. "I have to limit my involvement to what I think he can actually win," he says. If he can turn the general discharge (the honorable was later challenged, and revoked) into a medical separation, he'll have met his goal.

Even Hobson's advocates admit they can understand why the military might want to cut ties with him, considering his medical and psychiatric history. They say the whole matter has taken a toll on him, even as he continues pushing for what he calls justice.

"Ever since he got back from jail, he's had this attitude. Mean, grouchy, evil — it's something based on what happened out there. Once he got here, I saw how he'd changed. My husband don't do jail [well]," says Mary, who made her husband seek help after waking up one morning to see he'd stayed up overnight polishing off a case of beer. "Now, he's waiting for revenge and compensation, because if it wasn't for me holding everything down, he wouldn't have had anything when he came back."

To say Hobson is obsessed with his case would be an understatement. He's paid a personal price: Even though Mary got her transplant in October and is now healthy enough to go out onto 27th Street with a broom to help keep the neighborhood clean, Hobson spends much of his time living at a separate apartment he renovated a couple blocks away. They're still together, but they have to rebuild their relationship, something both expect to happen gradually. Whether he'll ever be able to prove he was targeted is probably unlikely, considering that he's a lone voice howling against an institution. But that doesn't mean he's about to stop trying.

When he learns that the military agreed to discuss his case with City Paper, he wrote 11 questions that he wanted them to answer. They all revolve around the theory that the drug charges are bogus, that he wasn't given a speedy trial, that he was a victim of a race-driven smear campaign. Hobson says he'll be happy with a formal apology, and the upgraded discharge, but every conversation always comes back to his desire to have his former superior officers tried on charges that they drove him to the brink. Still, he says he has much love for the military and for the men with whom he served, including those whom he took overseas to fight.

"I harbor no ill will toward the members of my squadron; the people at Dover Air Force Base are my family, but I'm done with the military," he says. "I'm looking forward to having a trial to expose them for what they are. People are going to get in trouble — people are going to go to jail because of what happened to me. You've seen A Few Good Men, right? None of those people want to take that kind of fall.

"Some people think I'm this meth-head who just went haywire. That they locked me up and handled it. Nobody knows that they dropped the charges, that they let me out of jail. I just want my name clean, that's all. They went to great lengths to defame me, so I want them to tell people I'm not a drug user. It's as simple as that."