It took Jacob Perez's feet a few days to stop barking after he started his first assignment.

Now they're used to carrying the rookie Atlanta police officer's weight for his entire eight-hour shift — something his feet haven't done since he was a Marine.

Allen Sullivan/AJC (ENLARGE)

Jacob Perez and his partner, fellow rookie officer Chris Wagner, check with shopkeepers on their beat in the West End area. Atlanta Police Department rookies are assigned to foot patrol.

Allen Sullivan/AJC (ENLARGE)

Atlanta police Officer R. Burks (left) gives tips to rookie Jacob Perez while on street patrol in the West End area. Not everyone in the area is happy to see officers on foot, but business owners seem pleased with their presence. When Perez received his assignment, he moved into an apartment near his beat.

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"In the infantry, we used to walk everywhere," Perez, 26, said. "I just had to get used to it again."

In recent years, working foot patrol has been a form of punishment in the Atlanta Police Department. Crashed your police cruiser? Serve a few days on the foot beat.

Now it's an assignment for rookie cops as soon as they come out of the Police Academy.

The department has split up the 24-person class that graduated in late April and assigned them foot beats in two of the city's highest crime areas. The program, pushed by the Atlanta City Council, is meant to kill two birds with one stone: Cut down on crime, and create a connection between officers and communities.

Ceasar Mitchell, the councilman who is the force behind the program, hopes each of the Police Department's six zones eventually will have officers on the foot beat.

"People want to see police officers on the street," said Mitchell, whose late father was an Atlanta police sergeant who walked a beat. "People want them out of the cars. They want to interact with them."

Foot beats aren't employed by many of metro Atlanta's police agencies, including those for DeKalb, Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties, as well as the cities of Sandy Springs and Marietta.

Some say it's because their areas are more spread out and not as densely populated as some parts of Atlanta.

"We don't have any one area that has enough call volume to justify foot patrol," Marietta police spokesman Mark Bishop said.

For now, Atlanta's foot patrols are limited to southwest Atlanta and the zone to its north, which includes parts of west-central and northwest Atlanta.

Perez and his partner, 23-year-old Chris Wagner, are stationed at West End mall. Perez asked to be paired with Wagner; they became friends in the academy.

Perez is a former Marine sniper from a military family that settled in Gwinnett County; Wagner was a UPS delivery man who left his Florida home to get away from hurricanes and the high cost of living.

Each day, they drive to West End, a community plagued by crime, park their police car in a CVS store parking lot, and start walking.

"We walk the entire time," Perez said. "The other foot beat guys, they walk their whole beat, too."

Perez and Wagner say they're excited about their first assignment.

"I was just happy to get out of the academy," Wagner said. "Being in the academy so long, you want to get out on the street."

It's taking the street a little while to warm up to the officers, though. Some people say hello, but most flash them looks of irritation.

Asked how he feels on the street, Wager is blunt. "Unwanted."

Will he try to get closer to the community? "As much as they'll let me."

On a recent evening, Perez and Wagner walked past a group of New Black Panther Party members, dressed in black and gathered in a parking lot. The group's leader, Najee Muhammad, said the area doesn't need foot patrol officers.

"This is a black-run community," he said. "We police ourselves."

But plenty of people are happy that the police are walking around.

"They're two of our favorites," said Kimberly Jones, a manager at Pizza Pie restaurant on Lee Street. "They're sweethearts."

Jones said she accidentally tripped the restaurant's alarm recently.

"Before I could even get the alarm people on the phone, they were here," she said.

Another local business owner, Jay Shah, said that groups of people once lingered outside his BP gas station, at the corner of Lee and Oak streets.

"I had a lot of problems with guys hanging outside the store, selling CDs, drugs, panhandling, prostitution — you name it," Shah said.

When Shah would ask them to leave, they'd curse at him. If he called police, they'd leave, wait for the police to come and go, then return.

These days, the crowd has moved on, Shah said, thanks to the officers who canvass the area.

"These guys, they're pretty accessible," Shah said. "If they're not here, they're across the street. Or at the mall. It's a security blanket."

Perez and Wagner say they've made a few arrests, for crimes like trespassing and disorderly conduct. But it's clear the young officers would be happier in the thick of the action.

On foot patrol, they rarely respond to 911 calls. They're doing their job, in essence, just by being seen. And, of course, by intervening if they see someone committing a crime.

The riffraff has also died down since they came on the scene.

"Our first day or two, it was people urinating in public, drinking in public," Perez said. "They don't do that anymore — at least not when we're around."

When they show up, crowds disperse.

"It's amazing how fast areas will clear out once we get out here," Wagner said. "Once we walk up there, they walk away."

So they change their route every day, popping around corners and alleys. They watch crowds on street corners from inside business buildings.

Perez and Wagner are getting to know the neighborhood's nooks. They've found two trash receptacles people hide behind to smoke crack, and a space under an awning where they suspect some stash drugs.

The officers know they're making a difference. When they're in West End, 911 calls rarely come in from there. As soon as they leave, the calls start to roll in, Perez said.

Perez doesn't have far to go when he gets off work. Once he learned of his assignment in southwest Atlanta, he moved to an apartment there, just two miles from the West End community he patrols.

"It just makes sense. I need to be part of the community," he said. "It makes me want to do my job better. It's my neighborhood, too."